Mental illness linked to suicide

ALMOST one in three people who commit suicide suffer from a mental illness or have a family history of suicide or mental illness, research shows.

Recognising and treating mental illness in young people could prevent suicide, a team of Danish researchers concluded after finding that a psychiatric condition outstrips socio-economic and family problems as the main risk factors for suicide in people aged between 10 and 21 years.

“Recognising mental illness in young people and dealing with it appropriately could help prevent suicides,” the psychiatrists and scientists from Copenhagen concluded in a study published in the British Medical Journal. “A substantial proportion of young people who commit suicide may have an untreated, under-treated or undiagnosed mental illness. Therefore an important target in the prevention of suicide in young people would be early recognition and treatment of mental illness.”

The research has prompted calls for the establishment of dedicated adolescent psychiatric facilities, better follow-up treatment for people who have attempted suicide and the appointment of community-based psychiatric workers who are trained in suicidology.

Some 448 Irish people took their own lives last year and 25% were aged between 15 and 24. Men are far more at risk, according to Central Statistics Office figures: 358 suicide victims were male compared with 92 women. Secretary of the Irish Association of Suicidology Dr John Connolly said, while mental health services have been developing in Ireland, there were few dedicated services for adolescents with a mental illness: “We do not have a residential unit for caring for adolescents with mental illness and we do not have specialist psychiatric units for adolescents.”

People with a psychiatric condition are least likely to keep follow-up appointments after an attempted suicide, he said. Hospital staff needed to be more assertive in attempting to ensure that people did not slip through the net.

“One of the recommendations is that there would be specialist liaison nurses in accident and emergency to act as a bridge between in-patient and community services and ensure better follow-up. A lot of the health boards are looking at that,” he said. Dr Connolly also underscored the need for better school counselling services and programmes targeted at early school-leavers, whom research has shown are more at risk of suicide.

A spokesman for Health Minister Micheal Martin said the health strategy contained a commitment to intensify the existing suicide prevention programmes over the coming years.

In 1998, the National Task Force on Suicide drew up a prevention strategy centring on providing information and training to relevant professionals and organisations, researching suicide prevention and targeting high-risk groups.

Speaking in the Dáil recently, Minister Martin said that 3.8 million euro had been allocated for suicide prevention programmes and research into prevention.

Suicide statistics

448 Irish people committed suicide last year. 356 of those were men.

People aged between 15 and 34 accounted for almost half of the total deaths.

In Ireland, the suicide rate is 10.9 per 100,000 people, compared to 23.8 in Finland and 3.8 in Greece.

30% of those who commit suicide are mentally ill or have a family history of suicide or mental illness.