The mental health conditions of most people who commit suicide remain undiagnosed, even though most visit a primary care provider or medical specialist in the year before they die. To help prevent suicides, health care providers should therefore become more attuned to their patients' mental health state and possible suicide ideation. These are the findings of Brian Ahmedani from the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan, in a new study- documenting the type and timing of health services sought by Americans who commit suicide. The study is the largest geographically diverse study of its kind to date, and appears in the Journal of General Internal Medicine-, published by Springer.
Ahmedani and colleagues in the Mental Health Research Network studied the medical records of 5,894 health-plan members from eight states who committed suicide between 2000 and 2010. This methodology provided data on the health care that people who commit suicide receive prior to their deaths.
Eighty-three percent of people received health care treatment in the year prior to dying, and used medical and primary care services more frequently than any other health service. However, a mental health diagnosis was made in less than half (45 percent) of these cases.
Only about one quarter of individuals were diagnosed with a mental health condition in the four weeks before they died, and one in every five people who committed suicide made a health care visit in the week prior to their death. In comparison, only five percent of people who committed suicide received psychiatric hospitalization, with only 15 percent receiving such treatment in the year before committing suicide.
