Time patterns of inpatient suicides

Abstract Objective. Time patterns of suicides have been investigated in many population-based studies, but there are no studies exploring time patterns of suicides during psychiatric inpatient stay up to now. Methods. All inpatient suicides (1998-2007) of a psychiatric university hospital were identified by the German psychiatric basic documentation system (DGPPNBADO). Descriptive and univariate analyses were performed to analyse time patterns of inpatient suicides. Results. No significant differences could be found for the occurrence of the 37 inpatient suicides due to season (χ(2)=1.595, P=0.696), month (χ(2)=4.838, P=0.958) or weekday (χ(2)=5.189, P=0.550) of suicide. Furthermore, we could not find an unequal distribution of suicides due to month of birth (χ(2)=12.622, P=0.337). 78.4% of inpatient suicides occurred within 50 days after admission. Fourteen inpatients committed suicide around public holidays, two around their birthday. Conclusions. Apart from a notably enhanced risk of suicide in the period after admission, we could not find any time patterns to be of high relevance to inpatient suicides. There may be more relevant risk factors than cyclic or temporal variations.