BACKGROUND Mental disorders have a strong association with suicide. This meta-analysis, or statistical overview, of the literature gives an estimate of the suicide risk of the common mental disorders.

METHOD We searched the medical literature to find reports on the mortality of mental disorders. English language reports were located on MEDLINE (1966-1993) with the search terms mental disorders', 'brain injury', 'eating disorders', 'epilepsy', 'suicide attempt', 'psychosurgery', with 'mortality' and 'follow-up studies', and from the reference lists of these reports. We abstracted 249 reports with two years or more follow-up and less than 10% loss of subjects, and compared observed numbers of suicides with those expected. A standardised mortality ratio (SMR) was calculated for each disorder.

RESULTS Of 44 disorders considered, 36 have a significantly raised SMR for suicide, five have a raised SMR which fails to reach significance, one SMR is not raised and for two entries the SMR could not be calculated.

CONCLUSIONS If these results can be generalised then virtually all mental disorders have an increased risk of suicide excepting mental retardation and dementia. The suicide risk is highest for functional and lowest for organic disorders with substance misuse disorders lying between. However, within these broad groupings the suicide risk varies widely.

Suicide as an outcome for mental disorders. A meta-analysis.

Federal Abortion Policy and Politics: 1973-1996 Why is Abortion Such a Controversial issue in the United States Barriers to Access to Abortion Services The Impact of Anti-abortion Activities on Women Seeking Abortions Black Women and the Question of Abortion Latinos and Abortion Abortion and Asian Pacific Islander Americans The Acceptability of Medical Abortion to Women Understanding the Relationship of Violence Against Women to Unwanted Pregnancy and it's Resolution Testing a Model of the Psychological Consequences of Abortion Men and Abortion: The Gender Politics of Pregnancy Resolution Abortion Among Adolescents A Cognitive Approach to Patient-Centered Abortion Care Abortion Issues in Psychotherapy Bringing Lessons Learned to the United States Improving Access to Abortion Services Abortion Practice, Policy, and Research: Recommendations for the 21st Century

Violent offenders: Appraising and managing risk.

The process of making judgments and decisions requires a method for combining data. To compare the accuracy of clinical and mechanical (formal, statistical) data-combination techniques, we performed a meta-analysis on studies of human health and behavior. On average, mechanical-prediction techniques were about 10% more accurate than clinical predictions. Depending on the specific analysis, mechanical prediction substantially outperformed clinical prediction in 33%-47% of studies examined. Although clinical predictions were often as accurate as mechanical predictions, in only a few studies (6%-16%) were they substantially more accurate. Superiority for mechanical-prediction techniques was consistent, regardless of the judgment task, type of judges, judges' amounts of experience, or the types of data being combined. Clinical predictions performed relatively less well when predictors included clinical interview data. These data indicate that mechanical predictions of human behaviors are equal or superior to clinical prediction methods for a wide range of circumstances.

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Clinical versus mechanical prediction: a meta-analysis.

https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/h0077132

Dropping out of treatment: a critical review.

The prediction of violence occupies a prominent and controversial place in public mental health practice. Productive debate about the validity of violence predictions has been hampered by the use of methods for quantifying accuracy that do not control for base rates or biases in favor of certain outcomes. This article describes these problems and shows how receiver-operating characteristic analysis can be used to solve them. The article also reanalyzes 58 data sets from 44 published studies of violence prediction. Taken together, these data strongly suggest that mental health professionals' violence predictions are substantially more accurate than chance. Short-term (1-7 day) clinical predictions seem no more accurate than long-term (> 1 year) predictions. Past behavior alone appears to be a better long-term predictor of future behavior than clinical judgments and may also be a better indicator than cross-validated actuarial techniques.

Assessing predictions of violence: Being accurate about accuracy.

Suicide in mental hospital patients.

Replicated correlates of MMPI two-point code types: The Missouri actuarial system†

Data collected from 1,023 alcoholic inpatients by means of a self-rating instrument were used to explore the dimensions and subgroupings of alcoholism. Fifteen factors derived from a factor analysis reflected the variety of psychological and social dimensions of the problem. Three subtypes of alcoholism emerged from an inverted (Q) factor analysis. These subtypes were characterized by means of a linear discriminant function analysis. Two subtypes appeared to be related primarily to severity, and the third primarily to sex and marital variables.

Factors in the description and grouping of alcoholics.

Prediction of length of hospital stay

Over 5,000 incident reports from a large state hospital were factor-analyzed, and actuarial risk-rates were calculated for the resulting nine factors. Incident risk-rates are presented for sex, race, marital status, and diagnosis. Findings include: (1) young, single males with deferred diagnosis are high incident risk; and (2) schizophrenic incident rates, when corrected for length of stay, are relatively low.

Harold Altman

Papers

Suicide in mental hospital patients.

Replicated correlates of MMPI two-point code types: The Missouri actuarial system†

Factors in the description and grouping of alcoholics.

Prediction of length of hospital stay

Disturbing behavior: A study of incident reports