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Suicide Study

Annette Beautrais

During the last 1015 years, concerns about rising rates of suicide have prompted increased interest in identifying issues related to the prevalence and cause of suicidal behaviour.

Over the last four years the Canterbury Suicide Project at the Christchurch School of Medicine has been collecting data in a comprehensive study of youth and adult suicide.

It consists of two separate but interrelated research studies.

The first is a case control study of suicide and serious attempted suicide, in which information has been collected about people in Canterbury who have died by suicide or have made serious suicide attempts requiring hospital admission and treatment. It will compare the information obtained about these individuals with the data from a series of 1,000 people chosen at random from the Canterbury community.

The three groups will be contrasted over a range of background factors including psychiatric illness, physical health, social and psychological characteristics, in an attempt to identify risk factors and points of intervention which may be relevant to suicide prevention programmes.

The second project is a longitudinal study of serious attempted suicide, based on the people in the case-control study who made serious suicide attempts.

Researchers plan to follow each of these people for two and a half years after their suicide attempt, to estimate the risk of subsequent suicide attempts or suicide, to identify risk factors which influence subsequent risks of suicidal behaviour, and to provide an account of the current management of attempted-suicide patients. It is hoped that this information could be used to guide planning and decision making about the provision of health services for people with a high risk of suicide.

During its first four years, the Canterbury Suicide Project has been funded jointly by Healthlink South and the Health Research Council of New Zealand.

Findings from the studies will be made available from this year onwards, though the second project will continue collecting data until 1996.

Annette Beautrais works for the Canterbury Suicide Project operating out of Christchurch Hospital.