TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2005//
TI  - Clustering of suicides among people with mental illness
JO  - British journal of psychiatry
A1  - McKenzie, N.
A1  - Landau, Simha F.
A1  - Kapur, Navneet
A1  - Meehan, Janet
A1  - Robinson, Jeff
A1  - Bickley, Harriet
A1  - Parsons, Rebecca
A1  - Appleby, Louis
SP  - 476
EP  - 480
VL  - 187
IS  - 
N2  - BACKGROUND: Most previous investigations of imitative suicide have reported suicide clustering in the general population, either temporal clustering following media reporting of suicide or case studies of geographically localised clusters. AIMS: To determine whether space - time and space-time-method clustering occur in a national case register of those who had recent contact with mental health services and had died by suicide and to estimate the suicide imitation rate in this population. METHOD: Knox tests were used for space-time and space-time-method clustering. Model simulations were used to estimate effect size. RESULTS: Highly significant space-time and space-time-method clustering was found in a sample of 2741 people who died bysuicide over 4 yearswho hadhadrecent contact with one of 105 mental health trusts. Model simulations with an imitation rate of 10.1% (CI 4-17) reproduced the observed space-time-method clustering. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides indirect evidence that imitative suicide occurs among people with mental illnesses and may account for about 10% of suicides by current and recent patients.
LA  - 
SN  - 0007-1250
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/bjp.187.5.476
ID  - ref1
ER  -