Suicide and Compulsory Mental Care

Risk factors for suicide among psychiatric patients that have experienced compulsory mental care 

Suicide is the leading cause of death among young adults in both Sweden and the world. Psychiatric inpatients in general present with an excess risk of suicide yet the risk is rarely studied in the subgroup admitted by force to compulsory mental care. A compulsory mental care decision is often used to prevent suicide but its effect is rather unclear. Today, we lack information on both the underlying risk and risk factors for suicide among compulsory mental care treated patients. The core purpose of this project is to apply epidemiological methods with a national 40-year cohort (1973-2013) of registry data to investigate both the suicide risk itself and associated risk factors for compulsory mental care patients. This knowledge base will thereafter inform better clinical decision making to reduce the suicide rate in these patients.

People involved in the project

_{The principal investigator of the project is John Wallert, clinical psychologist and assistant professor at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, KI. He has expertise in registry-based research and predictive modelling. Christian Rück, co-PI, psychiatrist and Professor at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, KI. He has expertise in leading large clinical and multimodal projects to completion and implementation. Leoni Grossmann, MSc. Roles: PhD student, data preprocessing, analysis, and writing on descriptive modelling and risk factor estimation. Robin Fondberg, PhD, psychologist. Roles: postdoc, data preprocessing, analysis and writing on causal inference with observational data. Lorena Fernández de la Cruz, co-PI, is a senior researcher at KI with expertise in register-based research including suicide and risk factors in psychiatric populations. Professor Seena Fazel, co-PI, Oxford University is a world-renowned expert in forensic psychiatry. Professor Fazel also does pioneering work on risk prediction tools for suicide and risk behaviours. Bo Runeson, KI, will provide the team with expertise in suicidology. David Mataix-Cols, Professor at KI, a highly cited researcher with 20 years of experience in psychiatric research, including suicide risk in common mental disorders. Julia Boberg is a clinical psychologist and PhD student. Roles: study design, data analysis, and interpretation. Paul Lichtenstein, Professor in genetic epidemiology and study director of the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (MEB) at KI. Professor Lichtenstein is a top-cited researcher with extensive experience of large-scale studies using nationwide registers, hereditary study designs, and genetic data. Role: Study design, result interpretation, general methodological expertise. Magnus Boman, Professor in Intelligent Software Systems and a computational epidemiologist at the Royal Institute of Technology. James Crowley, Associate Professor in Genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) and affiliated to KI. Role: Expertise in biological inheritance. Matthew Halvorsen, post doc at UNC-Chapel-Hill. Role: Cluster computing. Ekaterina Ivanova, clinical psychologist and post doc at KI. Role: Data management. Associate Professor Niklas Juth, KI, is a philosopher and medical ethicist with expertise in the ethical issues involved in risk estimation and clinical decision making.}

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Group members involved in the project