SUICIDE CLUSTERING IN A PSYCHIATRIC-HOSPITAL WITH A HISTORY OF A SUICIDE EPIDEMIC - A QUANTITATIVE STUDY

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.