High Prevalence of Two or More Suicide Attempts Associated with Suicidal Ideation and Mental Disease in Colombia 2016.

INTRODUCTION

Suicidal ideation and attempts are strongly predictive of suicide deaths. Furthermore, suicide attempts exert a financial burden of millions of dollars on society.

OBJECTIVE

To establish the factors associated with more than one suicide attempt in the Colombian population that was reported in 2016.

METHODS

A cross-sectional study of 18,763 reports entered in the database of the National Public Health Surveillance of the National Institute of Health of Colombia during 2016 was performed.

RESULTS

11,738 (62.6%) of the total number of reports were female, the mean age was 25.0 (95% CI, 24.9-25.2) years, 46% of all cases were individuals between 10- and 20-years-old; 5,734 (30.6%) reported 2 or more suicide attempts and the prevalence of a mental disorder and persistent suicidal ideation were 48.5% and 16.4%, respectively. The factor most strongly associated with more than one suicide attempt, after adjusting for logistic regression, was persistent suicide ideation with crude OR=5.5 (95% CI, 5.0-5.9), and ORa=4.0 (95% CI, 3.6-4.3).

CONCLUSIONS

Patients with persistent suicidal ideation were 4 times more likely to have 2 or more suicide attempts. Other factors such as the use of a sharp weapon as a mechanism to perform the attempt and the history of bipolar affective disorder and/or depression were also associated with more than one suicide attempt.