Neurological diseases and risk of suicide attempt: a case-control study

INTRODUCTION: Neurological diseases have a profound impact on quality of life. We investigated the risk of suicide attempt in ten neurological diseases.

METHODS: Case-control study. Cases were identified from the Danish Poison Information Centre database in the period 2006-2013. The prevalence of ten neurological diagnoses was compared with the prevalence in a randomly sampled age- and gender-matched control group.

RESULTS: We identified 8974 cases of suicidal attempt and 89,740 controls. We found an association between suicide attempt in nine of ten neurological diseases and disease groups, including stroke [odds ratio (OR) 3.1, 95% confidence interval (CI) (2.8-3.6)], Huntington's disease [OR 8.8, 95% CI (3.2-24.1)], amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [OR 5.0, 95% CI (1.7-14.6)], Parkinson's disease [OR 2.9, 95% CI (1.8-4.6)], Alzheimer's disease and other degenerative diseases [OR 4.8, 95% CI (3.1-7.5)], multiple sclerosis [OR 1.5, 95% CI (1.1-2.1)], epilepsy [OR 4.5, 95% CI (4.1-5.0)], hereditary and idiopathic neuropathy [OR 2.2, 95% CI (1.1-4.3)] and myasthenia gravis [OR 4.3, 95% CI (2.0-9.4)].

CONCLUSION: Nine out of ten chronic neurological diseases were associated with an increased risk of suicide attempt. These data must be considered for clinicians treating this vulnerable group of patients.