Risk factors for suicide attempts that needed medical admission in bipolar I patients

Suicide is a major public health issue. Huge efforts are made worldwide in order to prevent deaths by suicide. Bipolar disorders are associated with the highest risk of suicide. The aims of our paper were: to find the prevalence of severe suicide attempts in Romanian bipolar I disorder inpatients, finding risk factors that can be used to improve the evaluation of suicidal risk in clinical practice and to discuss the possibility of prevention. Data for our paper was drawn from a study conducted over a period of 8 months at the "Prof. Dr. Alexandru Obregia" Clinical Psychiatric Hospital and included 75 documented patients with bipolar I disorder. We created and compared two groups: "severe suicide attempts- suicide attempts that needed medical admission" group comprising 11 patients and the "without suicide attempts" group comprising 46 patients that never had a suicide attempt. We did not find any significant risk factors for suicide in the "serious suicide attempts" group compared to the "without suicide attempts" group regarding socioeconomic status, demographical data, clinical data, and psychological data, however the number of aborted suicide attempts were more frequent in the "serious suicide attempts" group compared to the "without suicide attempts" group (p=.037). In order to reduce death by suicide in the population we need to better understand the risk of associated factors. Further research is required to find the best interventions for suicide prevention.