Suicide attempts among adolescents in northeastern Slovenia: a 25 year report

Slovenia is one of the countries with the highest national suicide rates (30/100,000/year). The rate of suicide attempts is accordingly high, for both adolescents and adults. Suicidal children and adolescents from the four North-eastern regions of Slovenia are hospitalised at the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Unit of the General Hospital Maribor. The aim of this study was to show the pattern of changes in these hospitalisations along 25 years.

The data was collected retrospectively, using chart review of this unit by a psychiatrist for the years 1978 through 2004.

The data consists of two different samples. The first sample contains gender distribution (n = 774) from 1978 to mid 2004 with 664 girls and 110 boys, and the second sample (n = 1,477) consisted of suicide attempts as well as alcohol (n = 772) and drug abuse (n = 115) data for the last decade. The number of hospitalisations was increasing in a wavy curve with average 7,5 times more admitted girls than boys. In 98%, the suicide method was intoxication, and most were additionally diagnosed with "adolescent crisis" (ICD-10: F93.8).

The rise in the number of admitted suicidal adolescents was partly consequent to the improvement of their detection maybe because 25 years ago most of these cases were recorded as "accidental poisonings" and did not include the diagnosis of a suicide attempt. The socio-economic changes characteristic of a country in transition also contributed to this increase, as did the development of the Unit with more trained staff and advanced treatment.