title: Suicide in dementia: 9-year national clinical survey in England and Wales.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Knowledge of suicide in people with dementia is limited to small case series.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To describe behavioural, clinical and care characteristics of people with dementia who died by suicide.
  
  
  METHODS
  All dementia cases (n=118) from a 9-year national clinical survey of suicides in England and Wales (n=11 512) were compared with age- and gender-matched non-dementia cases (control group) (n=492) by conditional logistic regression.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The most common method of suicide in patients with dementia was self-poisoning, followed by drowning and hanging, the latter being less frequent than in controls. In contrast to controls, significantly fewer suicides occurred within 1 year of diagnosis in patients with dementia. Patients with dementia were also less likely to have a history of self-harm, psychiatric symptoms and previous psychiatric admissions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Known indicators of suicide risk are found less frequently in dementia suicide cases than non-dementia suicide cases. Further research should clarify whether suicide in dementia is a response to worsening dementia or an underappreciation of psychiatric symptoms by clinicians.
authors.affiliation: Psychiatry Research Group, School of Community Based Medicine, University of Manchester, University Place, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. nitin.purandare@manchester.ac.uk
authors.forename: Nitin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Purandare
authors.forename: Richard C Oude
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Voshaar
authors.forename: Cathryn
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rodway
authors.forename: Harriet
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Bickley
authors.forename: Alistair
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Burns
authors.forename: Nav
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kapur
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003704:Dementia / Q000401:mortality* / Q000523:psychology; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D013222:State Medicine / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology