@article{ref1,
title="Suicide in dementia: 9-year national clinical survey in England and Wales",
journal="British journal of psychiatry",
year="2009",
author="Purandare, Nitin and Voshaar, Richard C. Oude and Rodway, Cathryn and Bickley, Harriet and Burns, Adrian and Kapur, Navneet",
volume="194",
number="2",
pages="175-180",
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.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0007-1250",
doi="10.1192/bjp.bp.108.050500",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.108.050500"
}