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Updated: Feb 16, 2026

A Multimodal Imaging- and Stimulation-based Method of Evaluating Connectivity-related Brain Excitability in Patients with Epilepsy
Published on: November 13, 2016
Evaluating clinical risk factors for suicide attempts in patients with epilepsy
Tomor Harnod1, Cheng-Li Lin2, Chia-Hung Kao3
1Department of Neurosurgery, Hualien Tzu Chi General Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, Hualien, Taiwan; College of Medicine, Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan.
Objective:
We would like to exam whether epilepsy patients in Taiwan have a high risk of attempted and completed suicide.
Methods:
In this study, we used a subset of the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD) of Taiwan. Inpatients (≥ 18 years) who received a new diagnosis of epilepsy between 2000 and 2011 were enrolled in the epilepsy cohort. The epilepsy and comparison cohorts included 68,543 patients and 2-fold controls respectively. We calculated the adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) for suicide attempts after adjustment for age, sex, monthly income, the urbanization level, occupation, and comorbidity.
Results:
The epilepsy cohort had a 2.06-fold risk of suicide attempts (95% CI = 1.65-2.56) compared with the control cohort. The suicide attempt risk did not significantly differ between men and women and between patients with and without psychiatric comorbidity. The mortality risk after a suicide attempt was higher in the epilepsy cohort than in the comparison cohort (aHR = 1.66, 95% CI = 1.02-2.69).
Conclusion:
Epilepsy is an independent and predisposing factor for suicide attempt. These results provide important information for clinicians and governments to prevent suicide in epilepsy patients in Asian countries.
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