Attempted suicide in Europe: rates, trend.S and sociodemographic characteristics of suicide attempters during the period 1989–1992. Results of the WHO/EURO Multicentre Study on Parasuicide

Abstract

The World Health Organization/EURO Multicentre Project on Parasuicide is part of the action to implement target 12 of the WHO programme, "Health for All by the Year 2000', for the European region. Sixteen centres in 13 European countries are participating in the monitoring aspect of the project, in which trends in the epidemiology of suicide attempts are assessed. The highest average male age-standardized rate of suicide attempts was found for Helsinki, Finland (314/100,000), and the lowest rate (45/100,000) was for Guipuzcoa, Spain, representing a sevenfold difference. The highest average female age-standardized rate was found for Cergy-Pontoise, France (462/100,000), and the lowest (69/100,000) again for Guipuzcoa, Spain. With only one exception (Helsinki), the person-based suicide attempt rates were higher among women than among men. In the majority of centres, the highest person-based rates were found in the younger age groups. The rates among people aged 55 years or over were generally the lowest. For the majority of the centres, the rates for individuals aged 15 years or over decreased between 1989 and 1992. The methods used were primarily "soft' (poisoning) or cutting. More than 50% of the suicide attempters made more than one attempt, and nearly 20% of the second attempts were made within 12 months after the first attempt. Compared with the general population, suicide attempters more often belong to the social categories associated with social destabilization and poverty.

Prevalence of spinal cord injury in Helsinki

“…8,9 This is characteristic of Helsinki, in which the average male age-standardized rate of suicide attempts is the highest reported in Europe. 10 These data also confirm the findings of the SSCIS that the prevalence of paraplegia is higher than tetraplegia and that of incomplete than that of complete lesions. 8 On the other hand, the distribution of patients among the incomplete group is valuable, because such information has not been reported earlier in prevalence studies.…”

Clinical diagnoses, characteristics of risk behaviour, differences between suicidal and non-suicidal subgroups of Hungarian adolescent outpatients practising self-injury

“…Nonfatal deliberate SI or self-harm is not only most common in young people, especially young females [20,42], but is also the most frequent diagnosis among adolescent females in outpatient psychiatric facilities [18,20,21,25]. Ross and Heath [40] stress that 13.9% of students, especially girls, in community samples report self-mutilation.…”

Self-mutilative behaviors in male veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder

“…SMB has been shown to be related to higher levels of negative affect (Klonsky et al, 2003;Sampson et al, 2004); alcohol use (Roberts et al, 2004;Sansone, 2005); anger and hostility (Herpetz et al, 1997;Soloff et al, 1994); and impulsivity (Kingsbury et al, 1999;Maser et al, 2002;Simeon, 2006). Additionally, age may play an important role in the occurrence of SMB, with a higher incidence of SMB often found among younger individuals (Joyce et al, 2006;Sansone et al, 2002;Schmidtke et al, 1996). Self-mutilative behaviors have been differentiated from body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRB).…”