Physical Illness Preceding Suicide (IN: Psychiatry: The State of the Art, Volume 1 Clinical Psychopathology Nomenclature and Classification, ed. by P Pichot et al)

This article summarizes a literary search of research linking physical illness & suicide. The author includes sections medical, neurological & surgical illnesses. He concludes that the evidence linking physical disease & suicide is often faulty, and is modest in comparison to the effect of mental disease. He also believes that increases are often caused by an adverse influence on mood due to the effect of the disease, or of drug or other treatment, on the brain. (VM)