DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2019.v07i05.011

Pages: 1724-1731

Attempted suicide is an increasing burden on medical and psychiatric services. To evaluate psychiatric morbidity among the suicide attempters. This was a cross sectional descriptive and comparative study conducted in the Department of Psychiatry, Sylhet MAG Osmani Medical College Hospital, and Sylhet, Bangladesh during the period from January 2009 to December 2009. Fifty-nine (59) suicide attempters were selected according to inclusion and exclusion criteria and categorized as attempted suicide group. Age and sex matched 59 healthy control were also selected and categorized as control group. We found the mean age of the patients was 23.542 8.918 years which was similar to control group (p=1.000). Most of the patients (86.5%) were below the age of 30 years. Male constitute 40.7% and female 59.3% which was similar to the control group (p=0.710).Disease process (39.0%) was the most common cause of suicide attempt, followed by family problem (33.9%), quarrel with spouse (11.8%), quarrel with boy/girlfriend (8.5%), poverty (3.4%), failure in examination (1.7%) and unknown cause (1.7%).The co-morbid psychiatric disorder was present in 69.5% of suicide attempters and 13.5% in control group. The difference between the groups is statistically significant (p<0.001). The most common psychiatric disorder in suicide attempters was major depressive disorder (32.2%), followed by anxiety disorder (13.6%), schizophrenia (10.2%), adjustment disorder (5.1%), personality disorder (3.4%), schizophreniform disorder (3.4%) and bipolar mood disorder (1.7%). The co-morbid psychiatric disorder was most frequent in suicide attempters and there was a highly significant difference in psychiatric morbidity in suicide attempters as compared to healthy control (p<0.001) who were identical to the age and gender which strongly supports the hypothesis.