Acta psychiatrica Scandinavica
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Suicide risk was studied in a sample of 346 mood disorder inpatients, 92 of whom were admitted after a current suicide attempt. The overall suicide mortality after a mean observation period of 6 years was 8%. ⋯ The long-range suicide risk after a current suicide attempt in depression was 15% (14/92) as compared with 5% (13/254) among those without a current suicide attempt. It is concluded that a current suicide attempt in mood disorder inpatients predicts suicide risk particularly within the first year and should be taken very seriously.
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Acta Psychiatr Scand · Apr 1995
Overdose deaths in young substance abusers: accidents or hidden suicides?
Of 1969 earlier adolescent psychiatric inpatients, 1792 (91%) were traced after a mean follow-up period of 15 years. Thirty-nine patients, 2.3% of the men and 2.0% of the women had died from drug overdoses. An additional 16 drug- and alcohol-related deaths had occurred. ⋯ We found no significant differences between the overdose cases and their surviving controls. Both groups showed poor impulse control and risk-taking behavior more often than the suicide group. The study lends support to the hypothesis that the majority of overdose deaths in young drug addicts are accidental poisonings and not misclassified suicides.
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Acta Psychiatr Scand · Feb 1995
Comparative StudyDefinite and undetermined forensic diagnoses of suicide among immigrants in Sweden.
A total of 707 cases of violent death (suicide, undetermined mode or accident) occurring in 1990 were investigated at the Department of Forensic Medicine in Stockholm. The catchment area of the Department includes about 1.9 million people. Fourteen percent of the population in the area are immigrants. ⋯ The findings in this study indicates that immigrant status should be considered as a risk factor for suicide in Sweden. Previous reports on the high suicide rates among immigrants in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States suggest that the overrepresentation of immigrants found in our study could represent a worldwide epidemiological trend related to voluntary and forced migration. Possible hypotheses that could explain this phenomenon are discussed.
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Acta Psychiatr Scand · Jan 1995
Comparative StudyCross-national comparison of prevalence of symptoms of neurotic disorders in older people in two community samples.
The objective of this research was to compare the prevalence of symptoms characteristic of neurotic disorders in two different cultural settings. The design was two random community samples in Liverpool (United Kingdom) and Zaragoza (Spain), of 1070 and 1080 people aged 65 and over. The main outcome measures were the rating of symptoms on the Geriatric Mental State and syndrome levels using the Automated Geriatric Examination for Computer Assisted Taxonomy. The results showed substantial differences between the two cities in the symptomatic pattern of phobias, but both the symptomatic and syndrome presentation of obsessional, hypochrondriacal and anxiety disorders were much more similar.
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Acta Psychiatr Scand · Aug 1994
Electroencephalography, computed tomography and violence ratings of male patients in a maximum-security mental hospital.
A retrospective study of brain investigations of 372 male patients in a maximum-security mental hospital patients is described. All computed tomography (CT) scan and electroencephalography (EEG) reports were collected and rated blind; patients were subsequently divided into 3 groups according to the violence rating of their pre-admission offending behaviour. ⋯ The corresponding figures for the least violent group are 2.4% and 6.7% respectively. These results suggest that high violence rating scores are associated with temporal lobe abnormalities on CT and abnormal temporal electrical discharges on EEG.