Thinking life is not worth living. A population survey of Great Britain

"Saving lives: our healthier nation" includes a target to reduce the death rate from suicide. Thoughts of suicide and feeling life is not worth living might be the first step in a pathway that can end in completed suicide. This study aims to identify factors associated with feeling life is not worth living amongst the household population of Great Britain, and to assess the strength of these associations after taking account of an individual's level of psychiatric morbidity.

The 1993 OPCS National Psychiatric Morbidity Surveys of Great Britain assessed psychiatric morbidity using the Revised Clinical Interview Schedule amongst a stratified, clustered probability sample of 9830 subjects representative of the British private household population aged 16-64.

Of the sample 0.8 % (95 % CI 0.6 %-1 %) had thoughts of suicide in the week before interview and 3.1 % (95 % CI 2.7 %-3.5 %) reported thoughts of life not worth living in the week before interview. Psychiatric morbidity was most strongly associated with such thoughts. Ethnicity, marital status and low social support were strongly associated with such thoughts after adjusting for age, sex and psychiatric morbidity.

Reducing psychiatric morbidity in the population as a whole might also decrease the frequency of suicidal thoughts. Policies which improve social support at a population level might also have a large impact on prevalence of suicidal thoughts.