Prediction of suicide: a replication study

As part of an ongoing study on the prediction of suicide, a replication study was carried out on the Neuropsychiatric Hospital Suicide Potential Scale (NPHSPS), a recently constructed schedule for prediction of potentiality for committed suicide among hospitalized neuropsychiatric patients at the time of release from the hospital. The population consisted of 54 patients who had committed suicide and 50 patients who had not. Overall accuracy of the scale was 81.7 percent, with 95.2 percent accuracy for prediction of the high risk group and 80.0 percent accuracy for prediction of nonsuicidal controls. By computation of posterior probability, the scale is shown to increase accuracy of prediction more than five-fold over use of the base rate (or prior probability) alone, but it is also evident the level of prediction of suicide is still too minimal to permit individual clinical application.