Psychiatry and Psychology Commons^™

Patterns Of Suicide And Self-Harm In Pakistan: A Retrospective Descriptive Study Protocol, Nargis Asad, Shahina Pirani, Summaiya Tariq, Asra Qureshi, Mohammad Zaman, Mustafa Aslam, Farhat Mirza, Murad M. Khan

Department of Psychiatry

Introduction: Suicide is a major global public health problem. Low-income and middle-income countries contribute 78% of all suicidal deaths. Pakistan, a South Asian country, lacks official statistics on suicides at national level. Statistics on suicide are neither collected nationally nor published in the annual national morbidity and mortality surveys. Medicolegal reports on suicides and self-harm are extremely rich and important source of information but greatly underused in Pakistan. We aim to examine the patterns of suicides and self-harm retrospectively in patients who were registered with medicolegal centres (MLCs) in Karachi, during the period January 2017 to December 2021.
Methods and …

Suicide Numbers During The First 9-15 Months Of The Covid-19 Pandemic Compared With Pre-Existing Trends: An Interrupted Time Series Analysis In 33 Countries, Jane Pirkis, David Gunnell, Sangsoo Shin, Marcos Del Pozo-Banos, Vikas Arya, Pablo Analuisa Aguilar, Louis Appleby, S. M. Yasir Arafat, Ella Arensman, Murad Khan

Department of Psychiatry

Background: Predicted increases in suicide were not generally observed in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the picture may be changing and patterns might vary across demographic groups. We aimed to provide a timely, granular picture of the pandemic's impact on suicides globally.
Methods: We identified suicide data from official public-sector sources for countries/areas-within-countries, searching websites and academic literature and contacting data custodians and authors as necessary. We sent our first data request on 22nd June 2021 and stopped collecting data on 31st October 2021. We used interrupted time series (ITS) analyses to model the association between the …

Psychological Autopsy Study And Risk Factors For Suicide In Muslim Countries, S M Yasir Arafat, Murad M. Khan, Vikas Menon, Syeda Ayat-E-Zainab Ali, Mohsen Rezaeian, Sheikh Shoib

Department of Psychiatry

Background: Suicide and risk factors have been poorly studied in the Muslim-majority countries that hinder the formulation of prevention strategies and affect suicide prevention eventually.
Objectives: We aimed at identifying and analyzing the psychological autopsy studies assessing the risk factors for suicide conducted in Muslim-majority countries.
Methods: We did a search to trace all the available psychological autopsy studies in the Muslim countries with the search term "psychological autopsy study in Muslim countries." We also checked the available bibliographies to identify the psychological autopsy studies in the Muslim countries so that all the possible studies could be included.
Results: Out …

Sexual Violence And Suicide In Bangladesh, S M Yasir Arafat, Murad M. Khan

Department of Psychiatry

No abstract provided.

Risk Factors For Suicide In Bangladesh: Case-Control Psychological Autopsy Study, S M Yasir Arafat, M A. Mohit, Mohammad S I. Mullick, Russell Kabir, Murad M. Khan

Department of Psychiatry

Background: Suicide is an important, understudied public health problem in Bangladesh, where risk factors for suicide have not been investigated by case-control psychological autopsy study.
Aims: To identify the major risk factors for suicide in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Methods: We designed a matched case-control psychological autopsy study. We conducted a semi-structured interview with the next-of-kin of 100 individuals who died by suicide and 100 living controls, matched for age, gender and area of residence. The study was conducted from July 2019 to July 2020.
Results: The odds ratios for the risk factors were 15.33 (95% CI, 4.76-49.30) for the presence of …

Association Between Parental Psychopathology And Suicidal Behavior Among Adult Offspring: Results From The Cross-Sectional South African Stress And Health Survey, Lukoye Atwoli, Matthew K. Nock, David R. Williams, Dan J. Stein

Internal Medicine, East Africa

Background: Prior studies have demonstrated a link between parental psychopathology and offspring suicidal behavior. However, it remains unclear what aspects of suicidal behavior among adult offspring are predicted by specific parental mental disorders, especially in Africa. This study set out to investigate the association between parental psychopathology and suicidal behavior among their adult offspring in a South African general population sample.

Method: Parental psychopathology and suicidal behavior in offspring were assessed using structured interviews among 4,315 respondents from across South Africa. The WHO CIDI was used to collect data on suicidal behavior, while the Family History Research Diagnostic Criteria Interview …

Molecular Pathway Reconstruction And Analysis Of Disturbed Gene Expression In Depressed Individuals Who Died By Suicide, Vladimir Zhurov, John D. H. Stead, Zul Merali, Miklos Palkovits, Gabor Faludi, Caroline Schild-Poulter, Hymie Anisman, Michael O. Poulter

Brain and Mind Institute

Molecular mechanisms behind the etiology and pathophysiology of major depressive disorder and suicide remain largely unknown. Recent molecular studies of expression of serotonin, GABA and CRH receptors in various brain regions have demonstrated that molecular factors may contribute to the development of depressive disorder and suicide behaviour. Here, we used microarray analysis to examine the expression of genes in brain tissue (frontopolar cortex) of individuals who had been diagnosed with major depressive disorder and died by suicide, and those who had died suddenly without a history of depression. We analyzed the list of differentially expressed genes using pathway analysis, which …