Suicide among patients with diagnoses of anxiety reaction or depressive reaction in general medical and surgical hospitals.

Abstract

Analysis of records of Veterans Administration General Medical and Surgical patients with anxiety or depressive reactions, half of whom had committed suicide, and the rest of whom were matched nonsuicidal controls, showed that suicides and nonsuicides were significantly differentiated on each of 23 feeling and behavior items. Also most of the cases could be categorized in patterns, called: Object-Loss, suicides with severe interpersonal conflicts; Involutional, suicides with insult to their psychological integrity; Medical, controls with physical problems; Egoistic, both suicides and controls with few ties to society; Preegoistic (tentatively identified), younger controls who were possibly in an earlier stage of the Egoistic syndrome. An important measure against suicide is evidence that members of the hospital staff are interested in, and concerned about, the patient.