Nonresident Suicides in England: A National Study

Little is known about the numbers and characteristics of people who travel away from home before dying by suicide. Therefore, this studied attempts to identify the sociodemographic characteristics, location, and method of suicide in people who died distant from home, in a national sample. Data were collected on all English suicides and a patient population; nonresident suicides resided in one Health Authority but died in a different one. Twelve percent of suicides were nonresident and features of these included: young age, social adversity, and severe mental illness. In conclusion, both individual‐ and area‐based factors are likely to contribute to suicide away from home.     

Characteristics of a French African Caribbean Epidemiological Psychiatric Sample with a History of Suicide Attempt

Research on vulnerability factors among ethnic groups, independent of primary psychiatric diagnosis, may help to identify groups at risk of suicidal behavior. French African Caribbean general psychiatric patients (N = 362) were recruited consecutively and independently of the primary psychiatric diagnosis. Demographic and clinical characteristics and lifetime history of suicide attempts were recorded. Sixty‐five patients (18%) had a history of at least one suicide attempt. Presence of professional qualifications, children, poor social contacts, treatment with benzodiazepine at inclusion, and poor treatment compliance were all associated with a lifetime history of suicide attempts.     

Do Geographic Regions with Higher Suicide Rates also have Higher Rates of Nonfatal Intentional Self‐Harm?

Fatal and nonfatal intentional self‐harm events in eight U.S. states were compared using emergency department, hospital, and vital statistics data. Nonfatal event rates increased by an estimated 24.20% over 6 years. Case fatality ratios varied widely, but two northeastern states' total event rates (fatal plus nonfatal) were very high (New Hampshire 206.5/100,000 person years; Massachusetts 166.7/100,000). Geographic context did not uniformly impact the likelihood of self‐harm across event types. The state‐level public health burden posed by such acts cannot, therefore, be accurately estimated from either mortality or morbidity data alone.     

The Beliefs in the Inheritance of Risk Factors for Suicide Scale (BIRFSS): Cross‐Cultural Validation in Estonia,Malaysia, Romania,the United Kingdom,and the United States

The genetics of suicide is increasingly recognized and relevant for mental health literacy, but actual beliefs may lag behind current knowledge. We examined such beliefs in student samples (total N = 686) from Estonia, Malaysia, Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States with the Beliefs in the Inheritance of Risk Factors for Suicide Scale. Cultural effects were small, those of key demographics nil. Several facets of construct validity were demonstrated. Marked differences in perceived plausibility of evidence about the genetics of suicide according to research design, observed in all samples, may be of general interest for investigating lay theories of abnormal behavior and communicating behavioral and psychiatric genetic research findings.