Association between depressive and phobic disorders and suicidal ideation and attempts in women living in poor urban communities

This article presents the results from a study conducted with a representat ive sample of women living in four low-income communities in southern Mexic o City. The objective of the study were the following: learn the prevalence of suicide ideation, suicide attempts, and identify sociodemographic chara cteristics and affective and anxiety disorders that increase the risk of su icidal ideations and attempts. We conducted home interviews with one person older than 15 years of age per selected home. We requested the voluntary p articipation of the selected individual and we described the objectives of the research. The obtained results indicated a high prevalence of suicidal ideation, with about 7 out of 100 women having at least once thought about killing themselves. The prevalanece of suicide attempts in the studied popu lation was of 3.6%. Of the women who thought about killing themselves, 36.2 % reported depressive symptoms, 29.6% dysthemia, 17.6% phobias. In women wh o had attempted to kill themselves, the disorders reported with higher freq uency were depressive disorders and dysthemia, and in smaller proportions, phobias and other anxiety disorders. We conducted logistic regressions to d etermine which variables could be considered risk factors for suicide ideat ions and attempts. The variables identified as risk factors for suicide ide ation as well as for attempts were to report depressive disorders (11.62 ti mes higher risk for suicide ideation and 6.9 for attempts) and to be single (1.8 times higher risk for thinking to commit suicide and 1.4 for attempti ng to kill themselves).