Suicidal behaviour after first-episode psychosis: results from a 1-year longitudinal study in Portugal

• Published in: Annals of general psychiatry 2021-07, Vol.20 (1), p.1-35, Article 35
• Main Authors: Moutinho Coentre, Ricardo, Fonseca, Alexandra, Mendes, Tiago, Rebelo, Ana, Fernandes, Elisabete, Levy, Pedro, Gois, Carlos, Figueira, Maria Luisa
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cholesterol; Complications and side effects; Depression; Early intervention; First-episode psychosis; Hospitals; Longitudinal studies; Mental depression; Mental disorders; Patients; Primary Research; Psychoses; Psychosis; Psychotropic drugs; Risk factors; Schizophrenia; Statistics; Suicidal behavior; Suicidal behaviour; Suicide; Suicides & suicide attempts
• ISSN: 1744-859X; 1744-859X
• DOI: 10.1186/s12991-021-00356-0

© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. Background: Suicide is one of the main causes of excess of premature death in psychotic patients. Published studies found that suicide risk begins in ultra-high risk of psychosis and continues in early years of the disease. Previous studies identifying predictive and risk factors associated with suicidality in first-episode psychosis (FEP) are highly inconsistent. Also, there are relatively few longitudinal studies on suicidal behaviour in FEP. The aim of this study was to examine prevalence, evolution and predictors of suicidal behaviour at baseline and the 12-month follow-up in patients presenting with FEP. Methods: One hundred and eighteen patients presenting with FEP were recruited from two early psychosis units in Portugal. A comprehensive assessment examining socio-demographic and clinical characteristics was administered at baseline and the 12-month follow-up. Odds ratio were calculated using logistic regression analyses. McNemar test was used to evaluate the evolution of suicidal behaviour and depression prevalence from baseline to 12 months of follow-up. Results: Follow-up data were available for 60 participants from the 118 recruited. Approximately 25.4% of the patients had suicidal behaviour at the baseline evaluation, with a significant reduction during the follow-up period to 13.3% (p = 0.035). A multivariate binary logistic regression showed that a history of suicidal behaviour