Familial Aggregation of Suicidal Ideation in Psychiatric Patients: Influence of Gender

To investigate the role of familial factors for suicide ideation, 48 psychiatric patients belonging to 20 nuclear & 3-generation families were interviewed. The effect of familiality on suicide ideation was estimated through the use of mixed model analysis with family as random effect & gender, age, & depressive score as fixed effects. The effect of family was found to be statistically significant for the whole group of patients & for males. Significance persisted for the whole group & was reduced to indicative level for males when psychiatric diagnosis was also considered. Results indicate the occurrence of suicide ideation has a familial component, stronger among males than females. (40 refs.) JA