[Ambulatory psychiatric treatment and suicide]

From the few publications available in literature it is evident that suicide risk in psychiatric patients is considerably higher after their discharge from hospital than during inpatient treatment. The present study covers 21 recorded suicides of patients in a hospital outpatient ward for preliminary care and aftercare of psychiatric diseases. This figure represents 0.8% of all treated patients and corresponds to a suicide rate of 600 per 100.000 treatment episodes. At the time of suicide, 13 of these patients were still in outpatient treatment and 3 in the clinic. The others had been transferred or had discontinued treatment. Almost two-thirds suffered from psychoses belonging to the schizophrenic disease pattern. Contrary to what has been reported in literature, most of the suicides (almost two-thirds) occurred more than twelve months after their last hospital discharge.