Psychiatric Illness in a New Zealand Sample of Young People Making Serious Suicide Attempts

Using a case-control design, 129 young people making serious suicide attempts were compared to 153 randomly selected community controls on a series of measures of current & lifetime DSM-III-R diagnoses of mental disorders. Attempters were characterized by high rates of current mental disorder, current comorbidity, lifetime histories of psychiatric disorder & previous suicide attempts. The implications of these findings for the development of prevention strategies are discussed. (28 refs.)