Prostate Cancer and Suicide Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Suicide is a substantial public health concern, and there are a variety of contributing factors. Prostate cancer is known to be a disease at high risk of suicide regardless of country and age. Nonetheless, comprehensive information about associated risk levels and underlying determinants remains limited. To systematically evaluate the suicide risk in prostate cancer patients compared to control by systematic review and meta-analysis.

PubMed, Embase, and the Cochrane Library were searched from the earliest available indexing date through May 2024. The criteria for selecting the subjects were as follows: (1) studies including patients who had prostate cancer, (2) intervention was not specified, (3) comparison was made with people without prostate cancer selected as the control group, and (4) outcomes were measured as standardized mortality ratio (SMR) or relative risk (RR), or hazard ratio (HR) of suicide in prostate cancer. Random-effects model were used to estimate pooled effect sizes. Meta-regression analyses were conducted to identify the potential moderator effects between prostate cancer and the risk of suicide.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of these 25 studies that included a total of 4,987,941 participants were performed. The pooled SMR for overall suicide risk in prostate cancer compared with control groups was 1.251 (95% confidence interval [95% CI]: 1.120-1.383). The pooled RR or HR was 1.712 (95% CI: 1.306-2.243). The suicide risk of prostate cancer patients showed statistically significant in all cases of SMR and RR or HR. The suicide risk was also significantly higher in most subgroup analyses according to age and research follow-up period.

The findings of this systematic review and meta-analysis support the association between prostate cancer and increased risk of suicidal tendencies. Follow-up for prostate cancer patients should be highly integrated with psychiatric and psychological care to improve the psychosocial function of patients.