Self-harm suicide attempts more likely to cause relapse

People who have attempted suicide through self-harm run a much higher risk of eventually killing themselves than those who have tried but failed to fatally overdose on drugs, Swedish research has found.

Patients who have been treated for non-fatal self-harm such as hanging, stabbing or strangulation are more likely to take their own lives in a subsequent attempt than those who have tried to poison themselves, researchers at Stockholm's Karolinska Institutet said in a press release on Wednesday.

"There is a high risk of suicide after an attempt has been made, but the risk is particularly high for certain people," Bo Runeson, one of the researchers who authored the study, said.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, found that those who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, depression or psychosis ran a particularly high risk of dying from suicide later on.

One in five participants with bipolar disorder who had attempted suicide through self-harm had taken their own lives three to nine years after the attempt, the study found.

"These patients should be treated adequately according to their underlying illness and they should be offered psychosocial support, especially in the period immediately following a suicide attempt," Runeson said.

The researchers studied some 34,000 people who had been hospitalized after attempting suicide. Nearly 1,200 of them had died from suicide three to nine years after being treated.