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from the 10-out-of-10-who-succeed-at-suicide-will-not-attempt-it-again dept.
Nine out of ten people who attempt suicide and survive will not go on to die by suicide at a later date. This has been well-established in the suicidology literature. A literature review summarized 90 studies that have followed over time people who have made suicide attempts that resulted in medical care. Approximately 7% (range: 5-11%) of attempters eventually died by suicide, approximately 23% reattempted nonfatally, and 70% had no further attempts.
Even studies that focused on medically serious attempts–such as people who jumped in front of a train–and studies that followed attempters for many decades found similarly low suicide completion rates. At least one study, published after the 90-study review, found a slightly higher completion rate. This was a 37-year follow-up of self-poisoners in Finland that found an eventual completion rate of 13%.
This relatively good long-term survival rate is consistent with the observation that suicidal crises are often short-lived, even if there may be underylying, more chronic risk factors present that give rise to these crises.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday July 29 2019, @09:20AM (5 children)
... or you say this like it's a good thing. According to wikipedia there are roughly 15 Mio suicide attempts per year ~ 1 Mio being successful. Assuming most are first attempts (only 30% do re-attempt) this roughly means you have a life-time risk of attempting of < 10% and implying a death rate of < 1% for suicide. Comparing that to the 10% chance from suicide after attempting first, the risk increase is more than 10-fold. This seems to be contrary to the gist of TFS, I would argue prognosis is still relatively poor.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 29 2019, @09:25AM
Everyone who attempts suicide dies later, from one cause or another.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Magic Oddball on Monday July 29 2019, @09:59AM (1 child)
I think that the article's point is that there's evidence-based studies that completely contradict the common myth that anyone who attempts suicide will just keep trying repeatedly until they succeed, and that there's supposedly nothing that can be done to help them.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 29 2019, @01:40PM
I didn't realize that was a common myth. I seem to recall the common wisdom being that a failed suicide attempt gives people a renewed appreciation for life - much like any other close brush with death. Secondary emotional traumas may result, but a desire to die seems to usually be cured by a visit to death's doorstep.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday July 29 2019, @02:28PM (1 child)
You have cited no evidence that supports that claim, as I'm reasonably certain that the vast majority of people who attempt suicide the first time are already significantly "at risk" of dying from suicide before they attempt it. (Excepting the presumably rare case of someone who wakes up one morning and randomly says, "Hey, I'm bored today. What the heck, maybe let's try something different -- maybe attempt suicide!") Whereas the vast majority of people who never attempt suicide are much less "at risk" of dying from suicide.
What you'd really need to do is compare the pre-existing "risk" of those likely to attempt suicide with the "risk" of those same people after their first attempt. For example, maybe bored, depressed, loners who are out-of-work and suffer from some debilitating illness are much more likely than the average person to die of suicide. Then, if that same group of people attempts suicide once and only has a risk of having a subsequent successful attempt of less than 10%, their "risk increase" after the first attempt will likely not be "more than 10-fold." In fact, depending on the stats, it may have even decreased compared to the risk of that group before a first attempt.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Monday July 29 2019, @09:47PM
I do not have to cite evidence as I gave you the calculation. To simplify it a bit: compare the 10% chance of dying from suicide in a re-attempt with the marginal chance of dying from suicide which is ~1%.