Suicide in one partner increases risk in the other

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A study shows that if someone commits suicide, their partner is more likely to take their own life.
Clearly, having a loved one commit suicide is traumatic for those left behind. Now researchers at the University of Vienna, Austria, reveals that the partners of those who kill themselves have an increased risk of suicide themselves.

They looked at causes of death among the Danish population and found 9,000 suicides among nearly half a million individuals. Analysis showed that women whose partners had first been admitted to a psychiatric unit within the preceding two years were almost seven times as likely to kill themselves as women whose partners had good mental health.

Men in the same circumstances had a fourfold increased suicide risk. If they lost their partner to suicide, they were 46 times more likely to commit suicide themselves, compared to men whose partners did not commit suicide. For a woman bereaved by suicide, the increased risk of killing themselves was threefold. Parents who lost a child, through suicide or other causes, also ran an increased risk of killing themselves. The link between partners who commit suicide or are mentally unstable might be explained by associative mating - the tendency for depressives to seek one another out. Clearly this is a phenomenon worthy of further investigation.

Source
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health April 2005 Volume 59 pages 347-348

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