title: [Evaluation of insomnia as a risk factor for suicide].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Perform a non-systematic review of the literature to describe the relationship between insomnia and suicide and the findings of these studies.
  
  
  METHODS
  A search was conducted in PubMed, Medline, SciELO, LILACS, and Cochrane Library OVID data combining MeSH terms: "Suicide and sleep initiation and maintenance disorders".
  
  
  RESULTS
  Insomnia has been related to suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and suicide deaths in cross sectional studies since more than a decade. Suicide is one of the main causes of death.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There are multiple risk factors for committing suicide; some are unmodifiable, such as age, male gender and Caucasian ethnicity; and others are potentially modifiable, such as symptoms of depression, substance abuse and sleep disturbances. Among these disturbances, insomnia has been proven to hold a stronger relation to suicide attempts and deaths, although nightmares have also been associated. Actually, insomnia is considered a stronger predictor of lethal suicide attempts than the presence of a suicide plan.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Here lays the importance of why physicians must learn to detect and evaluate insomnia as a sign of alarm and a risk factor for suicide, no matter what illness the patient suffers from.
authors.affiliation: Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Sede Bogotá - Facultad de Medicina - Departamento de Psiquiatría - Bogotá, D.C. - Colombia. Fundación Sueño Vigilia Colombiana. Bogotá, D.C. - Colombia.
authors.forename: Franklin
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Escobar-Córdoba
authors.affiliation: Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Sede Bogotá - Facultad de Medicina - Departamento de Psiquiatría - Bogotá, D.C. - Colombia.
authors.forename: Margarita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Quijano-Serrano
authors.affiliation: Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Sede Bogotá - Facultad de Medicina - Departamento de Psiquiatría - Bogotá, D.C. - Colombia.
authors.forename: José Manuel
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Calvo-González
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D012307:Risk Factors; D007319:Sleep Initiation and Maintenance Disorders / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology*