Psychological autopsy study comparing suicide decedents with and without a history of suicide attempts in a nationwide sample of South Korea

Abstract

The majority of suicide decedents die on their initial attempt. To bring attention to suicide decedents without a suicide attempt history, the current study explored their demographic, clinical, and suicide-related characteristics. The data were derived from the Korea National Investigation of Suicide Victims Study, which assessed all suicide cases from 2013 to 2017 recorded in police investigation reports. We compared suicide decedents with and without a history of nonfatal attempts using the Korea Psychological Autopsy Checklist for Police Records (K-PAC). Out of 5228 cases included in our study, 3147 (60.2%) died on their first suicide attempt. Demographically, those who were male, older than 65, employed, and married/widowed were more likely to die on their initial attempt. Clinically, those who died on their initial attempt were more likely to have never been diagnosed with psychiatric disorders, whereas those who died on a repeated attempt were more likely to have been diagnosed with mood disorders. In terms of suicide-related factors, experiencing relationship problems and complaining about physical discomfort were associated with dying on an initial attempt. Depressed affect, self-harming behaviors, and talking about suicide or death were associated with repeated attempts.

Investigation of the Relationship Between Psychiatry Visit and Suicide After Deliberate Self-harm: Longitudinal National Cohort Study

“…Another noteworthy finding is that individuals who had mild to severe physical disabilities belonged to subgroups that had received psychiatric diagnoses from psychiatry departments as well as other departments and showed a tendency to engage in more severe forms of DSH. Having a physical disability significantly increased one’s risk of DSH as well as death by suicide, in part by making them more susceptible to the deterioration of mental health [ 14 , 50 ]. It may be in the best interest of nonpsychiatric physicians to perform routine psychiatric evaluations and to actively consult with psychiatrists if their patients show signs of heightened anxiety and depression during treatment for their physical health conditions.…”

Standardized Suicide Prevention Program for Gatekeeper Intervention of North Korean Defectors in South Korea

“…In addition, training familiar faces within their communities who have experienced similar defection processes and settlement facilitates early identification of those at risk for suicide. Second, suicide risk signals among NKDs consisted of previous suicide prevention programs and related articles for NKDs with a multidisciplinary research team [ 13 - 20 , 26 , 27 ]. “Suicide CARE for NKDs” was customized based on the specific difficulties NKDs currently face.…”

Analyzing suicide life stories on Wikipedia with Highway_star and other textual visualization tools

“…However, no work seems to have deepened this critic and the popularity of the method, illustrated for example by the production of the 'next generation' psychological autopsy (Conner et al 2011) might represent that this theoretical limitation is empirically irrelevant. The psychological autopsy's popularity for studying suicide begins in the middle of the 1980s (Shafii et al 1985), grows in the 1990s (Duberstein et al 1994;Hawton et al 1998;Appleby et al 1999) and explodes worldwide in the 2000s and after (Cheng et al 2000;Isometsä 2001;Phillips et al 2002;Cavanagh et al 2003;Hawton et al 2004;Zonda 2006;Bastia and Kar 2009;Yook et al 2020;Affleck et al 2020;Leenaars et al 2020;Zhu et al 2021;최et al 2021;Choi et al 2021;Zhou et al 2021). Finally, the important number of suicide studies relying on psychological autopsies becomes in the middle of the 2000s the raw material of several meta-analysis (Arsenault-Lapierre et al 2004;Yoshimasu et al 2008;Cavalcante and Minayo 2012;Richardson et al 2013;Too et al 2018;Conner 2019;Conner et al 2019).…”