Tj. Taiminen et H. Helenius, SUICIDE CLUSTERING IN A PSYCHIATRIC-HOSPITAL WITH A HISTORY OF A SUICIDE EPIDEMIC - A QUANTITATIVE STUDY, The American journal of psychiatry, 151(7), 1994, pp. 1087-1088
To determine if the suicides in a Finnish psychiatric hospital with a
history of a suicide epidemic were clustered and if the sex distributi
on of the suicides followed a random pattern, the authors conducted st
atistical analyses of the temporal distribution and sex distribution o
f 59 consecutive inpatient suicides over the years 1967-1992 in the ho
spital. They found no statistically significant temporal clustering an
d that the sex distribution of the suicides was random. They conclude
that inpatient suicide epidemics seem to be rare and separate events,
related more to temporary micro-social factors and to the psychopathol
ogy of individual patients than to permanent characteristics of a part
icular hospital.