Citation

Purandare N, Voshaar RCO, Rodway C, Bickley H, Burns A, Kapur N. Br. J. Psychiatry 2009; 194(2): 175-180.

Affiliation

Psychiatry Research Group, School of Community Based Medicine, University of Manchester, University Place, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. nitin.purandare@manchester.ac.uk

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Royal College of Psychiatry)

DOI

10.1192/bjp.bp.108.050500

PMID

19182182

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Knowledge of suicide in people with dementia is limited to small case series. AIMS: To describe behavioural, clinical and care characteristics of people with dementia who died by suicide. METHOD: All dementia cases (n=118) from a 9-year national clinical survey of suicides in England and Wales (n=11 512) were compared with age- and gender-matched non-dementia cases (control group) (n=492) by conditional logistic regression. RESULTS: The most common method of suicide in patients with dementia was self-poisoning, followed by drowning and hanging, the latter being less frequent than in controls. In contrast to controls, significantly fewer suicides occurred within 1 year of diagnosis in patients with dementia. Patients with dementia were also less likely to have a history of self-harm, psychiatric symptoms and previous psychiatric admissions. CONCLUSIONS: Known indicators of suicide risk are found less frequently in dementia suicide cases than non-dementia suicide cases. Further research should clarify whether suicide in dementia is a response to worsening dementia or an underappreciation of psychiatric symptoms by clinicians.

Language: en