Attempted suicide in psychiatric outpatients with concurrent physical illness

Fifty outpatients with concurrent psychiatric and physical illness who were referred following a suicidal attempt to the Outpatient Psychiatric Department, University of Athens, during a period of 3 years (1979-1981) were compared with a random sample of 85 psychiatric outpatients without concurrent physical illness who had attempted suicide at the same time period. Attempters suffering from both mental and physical illness were more often of an older age, married, pensioners or housewifes, were living with their own family, were suffering from organic psychotic condition or major affective disorder (depressive type) and more frequently used violent methods for attempting suicide. Among attempters the commonest physical illnesses were neurological diseases (40%), cardiovascular diseases (26%) and cancer (10%).