1Gupta Psychiatric Nursing Home, Power House Road, Bathinda-151001, (Punjab).
2Department of Psychiatry, Adesh Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Bathinda-151101, (Punjab).
3Department of Anesthesia, Adesh Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Bathinda-151101, (Punjab).
4Department of Obstetrics and Gyanecology, Adesh Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Bathinda-151101, (Punjab).
Millions of people throughout the world live in pain and agony because they are physically, mentally or socially disturbed. Suicidal behaviour is seen in a fraction of these unadjusted people.
To study Psycho-pathology in relatives of attempted suiciders.
A cross sectional study was conducted in a Medical college & Research Institute in North India over a period of one year. Psychopathology in first degree relatives of patients with suicidal attempt, as well as normal controls was studied using family history - Research diagnostic criteria (FH-RDC). Chi-square, fisher exact and t-tests were used to note statistically significant associations.
The study shows that the percentage of relatives of suicide attempters having psychiatric illness is significantly higher as compared to the relatives of controls (p=0.02). Psychiatric illness prevalent in both the groups was - affective disorder (7.4% relatives of suicide attempter and in 1.9% relatives of controls), alcohol dependence (7.1% vs 1.9%) schizophrenia (0.89% vs 0.17%), conversion disorder and dissociative trance disorder (0.18% relatives of suicide attempters).
Psychiatric illness is more prevalent in relatives of attempted suicides. Clinical prediction of suicidal risk remains an imperfect art that needs to be improved. Awareness programmes, preventive measures and proper psychiatric referral system should be built up to decrease the incidence of suicidal attempts.
Psychiatric disorders, Suicide, Family history- research diagnostic criteria
