Gender differences in suicide attempters: a retrospective study of precipitating factors for suicide attempts at a critical emergency unit in Japan

BMC Psychiatry

Research Article

Yasushi Otaka¹  Ryuichiro Narishige¹  Yoshiro Okubo¹  Takuya Saito²  Yoshitaka Kawashima³ 

[1] Department of Neuropsychiatry, Nippon Medical School, 1-1-5 Sendagi, Bunkyo-ku, 113-8603, Tokyo, Japan;Department of Neuropsychiatry, Nippon Medical School, 1-1-5 Sendagi, Bunkyo-ku, 113-8603, Tokyo, Japan;Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, Hokkaido University, North 15, West 7, Kita-ku, Sapporo-shi, Japan;Department of Neuropsychiatry, Nippon Medical School, 1-1-5 Sendagi, Bunkyo-ku, 113-8603, Tokyo, Japan;Department of Neuropsychopharmacology, National Institute of Mental Health, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, 4-1-1 Ogawahigashi-cho, Kodaira-shi, Tokyo, Japan;

关键词: Suicide attempters;    Precipitating factors for suicides;    Gender differences;    Critical care medical center;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-14-144

 received in 2014-01-18, accepted in 2014-05-13,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThere is a shortage of empirical data concerning precipitating factors for suicides in Japan. The purpose of the present study was to clarify gender differences of precipitating factors for suicide attempts in Japan.MethodsThe subjects were high-lethality suicide attempters who were admitted to the Nippon Medical School Hospital Critical Care Medical Center between March 1, 2010 and March 31, 2012. Precipitating factors for suicide attempt, method of suicide attempt, psychiatric diagnoses and other sociodemographic data were collected from the patients’ medical records retrospectively, and statistical analyses were performed for categorical variables of male/female.ResultsThe total number of subjects was 193 (88 males and 105 females). The rate of subjects attempting suicide by poisonous gas was significantly higher in males while that of subjects attempting suicide by drug overdose was significantly higher in females. The rate of subjects diagnosed with “major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder” was significantly higher in males while that of subjects diagnosed with “personality disorders” or “dysthymic disorder” was significantly higher in females. Subjects with “health problems”, “financial problems”, “work problems”, “debts (others)” or “unwanted transfer” were significantly more numerous among males; subjects with “family problems”, “parent–child relations” or “loneliness” were significantly more frequently found among females.ConclusionsMental disorders were the most common precipitating factor for suicide attempts regardless of gender. Significant gender differences were observed in psychiatric diagnoses, methods of suicide attempt and psychosocial problems. This indicates the necessity of suicide prevention measures corresponding to these gender differences.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Narishige et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.