Suicide, attempted suicide and antidepressant drugs

The concepts of depression and hostility are reviewed. The relationship between the two has been clarified by the use of psychometric tests. Hostility levels are high in depressive illness, especially on the intropunitive scales. Both total hostility and the degree of intropunitiveness are reduced as the patient recovers from his illness. Suicidal acts are seen as aggression directed towards the self. In some patients a tendency to recurrent drug overdosage or other forms of self-punitive behaviour may be the result of pathological character traits caused in turn by abnormal development in infancy. Looking at the possibility of cutting down the incidence of suicidal behaviour we conclude that we must look at the influence of depression, total hostility and direction of hostility in precipitating self-damaging acts. It is possible that antidepressants vary in the extent to which they act on these various factors, as well as having different rates of action on the several components of the depressive syndrome. There are thus a priori grounds for predicting that the incidence of self-damaging behaviour will vary from drug to drug. We describe the results of a study of suicidal behaviour carried out in general practice. A differential association with the major antidepressant drug was observed. In particular low rates were seen with the imipramine group, and there was a tendency towards high rates with the dothiepin-doxepin group. We propose to investigate this relationship further.