Schizophrenics more likely to attempt suicide: study
Schizophrenics who had been physically abused during childhood were five times more likely to have attempted suicide.
Toronto: People with schizophrenia are six times more likely to attempt suicide than those without the mental disorder characterised by abnormal social behaviour and failure to recognise what is real, a new study has claimed.
Researchers from the University of Toronto (U of T) also found that those with schizophrenia who had been physically abused during childhood were five times more likely to have attempted suicide.
The lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts among individuals with schizophrenia was 39.2 per cent compared to 2.8 per cent of those without the disorder, researchers said. They examined a representative sample of 21,744 community-dwelling Canadians, of whom 101 reported they had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
"When we focused only on the 101 individuals with schizophrenia, we found that women and those with a history of drug or alcohol abuse and/or major depressive disorder were much more likely to have attempted suicide," said Bailey Hollister from U of T.
Individuals with schizophrenia who reported that they had been physically abused during their childhood were five times more likely to have attempted suicide and early adversities explained 24 per cent of the variability in suicide attempts, researchers said.
"Even after taking into account most of the known risk factors for suicide attempts, those with schizophrenia had six times the odds of having attempted suicide in comparison to those without schizophrenia," said Esme Fuller-Thomson from U of T.
"Clearly those with schizophrenia are an extremely vulnerable population. Knowledge of the added risk of suicide attempts associated with childhood abuse and substance abuse could help clinicians improve targeting and outreach to this population," Fuller-Thompson said.