Gender and suicidality prediction in epilepsy

The current study was carried out to compare the accuracy of suicidal risk prediction in patients with epilepsy for each gender separately and as a group (males+females). The discriminant function analysis was performed to create an algorithm for suicidal risk classification for males and females separately and as a group. The main characteristics of epilepsy, such as type and mean frequency of seizures and kind and mean daily dose of AEDs were used as independent variables. The accuracy of suicidality prediction is higher for each gender than for the joint group. There was a statistically significant difference between the joint group and male epileptic patients and a trend toward more precise suicidality prediction among men than women, although the discrepancies were not significant. It was concluded that gender is an important factor in suicidality prediction, and more precise prediction of suicidal risk is possible for male epileptic patients because of the better differentiation of suicide grades in males than in females.