Gender Differences in Healthcare Service Utilisation 1 Year Before Suicide: National Record Linkage Study

All 12,497 suicides in Taiwan, 2001-2004, were identified from mortality records retrived from the National Health Insurance Database. 95.1% of females & 84.9% of males had been in contact with health care services in the year before their death. Females received significantly more diagnoses of psychiatric disorders & major depression than did males. Such differences were consistent across different medical settings where contact with hospital-based non-psychiatric physicians was as common as with general practitioners. However, psychiatric disorders were underdiagnosed in both genders. (11 refs.) JA