Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Psychiatry has provided the statistical evidence that a number of mental disorders, including schizophrenia, mood disorders, anxiety disorders and substance abuse, are suicide risk factors. In the last several decades, in response to general/global concerns posed by suicide, various research efforts have aimed to identify the theoretical risk and resilience factors of suicide. In spite of these efforts, recent meta-analysis studies indicated that the identified risk factors cannot contribute compared to a chance. Furthermore, dissociation between suicide risk and resilience factors emphasises that suicide resilience factors are not useful as predictors of suicide. Until recently, psychiatry and public health science have only reaffirmed that suicide is a very complicated multifactorial social phenomenon. Several recent meta-analysis studies reported that the suicide mortality rate of individuals who were discharged from emergency departments and the medical and surgical wards of general hospitals was highest in the first year (more than 300 per 100,000) post-discharge; this tendency remains elevated in the long term (30~80 times higher than healthy individuals); however, another meta‐analysis estimated the suicide mortality rate of about 200 times the global suicide rate among people discharged from in‐patient psychiatric care after admission with suicidal thoughts or behaviours. On the other hand, surprisingly, little attention has been paid to the neuropsychiatric sequelae and socioeconomic realities of suicide attempters. In this Special Issue, we want to focus on the medical, social, and economic factors before and after suicide to interpret the reality behind the phenomenon of suicide.

Prof. Dr. Motohiro OKADA
Guest Editor

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Keywords

Suicidal ideation
Suicidal behaviours
Suicide attempters
suicidal neuropsychiatric sequelae
Suicidality
Survivors
Risk assessment
Resilience
Intervention
Mental health
Mental disorders
Cognition
Emotional perception

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 1962 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Analysing the Impacts of Financial Expenditure of Prefectures on Methods of Suicide Completion in Japan

by Kanae Kashimoto and Motohiro Okada

Psychiatry Int. 2022, 3(1), 1-16; https://doi.org/10.3390/psychiatryint3010001 - 21 Dec 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2803

Abstract

Recently, several studies reported that the governmental financial expenditures play important roles in the prevention of increasing suicide mortalities; however, the specific regional policies, designed dependent on regional cultural, economic, education and welfare backgrounds, affect suicide mortality by a specific suicidal means. Therefore, the present study determined the impacts of the regional governmental expenditure of six major divisions, “public health”, “public works”, “police”, “ambulance/fire services”, “welfare” and “education” on suicide mortalities by five major suicidal means, “hanging”, “poisoning”, “charcoal burning”, “jumping” and “throwing”, across the 47 prefectures in Japan during 2009–2018 using fixed-effect analysis of hierarchal linear regression with robust standard error. The expenditures of “ambulance/fire services” and “education” indicated the negative relation to suicide mortalities by wide-spectrum suicidal means, whereas expenditures of “public works” did not affect suicide mortalities. In the education subdivisions, expenditure of “kindergarten” and “elementary school” indicated the impacts of reduction of suicide mortalities, whereas the expenditures of “special school” for individuals with disabilities unexpectedly contribute to increasing suicide mortalities by poisoning, charcoal burning and throwing of females. Regarding subdivisions of welfare, expenditure of “child welfare” and “social welfare” contributed to a reduction in suicide mortalities, but expenditure of “elderly welfare” surprisingly contributed to increasing suicide mortalities. Furthermore, expenditures of welfare subdivision abolished the negative impacts of the expenditures of educational subdivisions, kindergarten and elementary school, but the positive impact of expenditure of special school on female suicide mortalities was not affected. These results suggest that most Japanese people are struggling to care for children even in the situation of an increasing elderly population with a decreasing birthrate. Therefore, it is important to enhance the investment welfare policy for the future to improve the childcare environment. The results demonstrated by this study suggest that the scientifically evidence-based redistributions of welfare expenditure in regional government, at least partially, provide improvement of Japanese society and welfare systems, under the continuous severe Japanese social concerns associated with increasing elderly population with a decreasing birthrate. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Suicide and Mental Health)

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11 pages, 1185 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Social Participation as a Predictor of Morbid Thoughts and Suicidal Ideation among the Elderly Population: A Cross-Sectional Study on Four Low-Middle-Income Countries

by Bishwajit Ghose, Rui Huang, Josephine Etowa and Shangfeng Tang

Psychiatry Int. 2021, 2(2), 169-179; https://doi.org/10.3390/psychiatryint2020013 - 05 May 2021

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2886

Abstract

Social wellbeing constitutes a critical aspect of one’s health, quality of life, and overall psychosocial wellbeing. Social isolation and perceived loneliness are growing public health concerns as they are considered to be important risk factor for poor physical and mental health outcomes. Not much is known about how the level of one’s social participation is associated with morbid thought and suicidal ideation. In the present study, we aimed to investigate whether social participation shows any significant correlation with morbid thought and suicidal ideation among the elderly population. Methods: Cross-sectional data were collected from Wave 1 of the Study of Global AGEing and Adult Health (SAGE). The sample population consisted 2018 men and women aged 65 years and above from the following countries: China (n = 787), Ghana (n = 278), India (n = 560), and Russia (n = 396). Outcome variables of self-reported occurrence of morbid thoughts and suicide ideation during the past 12 months were reported. Results: A great majority of the participants reported not participating in activities such as public meetings (84.6%), club meeting (49.6%), neighborhood activities (46%), and religious activities (57.2%). Those who reported attending public meetings several times a year had a higher likelihood of reporting having morbid thoughts (predicted probability = 1.24, 95% CI = 1.02, 1.52). However, the association was no longer significant after stratifying by sex. Attending clubs (marginal effect = 0.61, 95% CI = 0.49, 0.76) and neighborhood activities (predicted probability = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.58, 0.88) several times a year showed protective effects against morbid thoughts. Being visited by friends several times a month (predicted probability = 0.52, 95% CI = 0.40, 0.67) and visiting friends (predicted probability = 0.61, 95% CI = 0.50, 0.75) several times a year also showed lower likelihood of morbid thoughts. Similar effects were observed for attending social gatherings with colleagues and social events as well. Conclusions: The present findings suggest that there exist significantly positive associations between participation in social activities and morbid thoughts and suicidal ideation among the elderly population in the sample countries. More in-depth studies are necessary to investigate the barriers to participation in social activities as well as the role of the quality of social relationships with experiencing suicidal thoughts. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Suicide and Mental Health)

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