Study Finds Acute Stress Reaction Linked to Higher Risk of Suicide
People diagnosed with acute stress reaction are more likely to complete suicide than the general population, according to a new study led by researchers affiliated with the Boston University School of Public Health.
“Clinicians and public health professionals should be aware of the importance of screening for suicidality among people immediately following a traumatic or stressful event,” the authors wrote.
The study, published online ahead of print in the International Journal of Epidemiology, found that people diagnosed with acute stress reaction were 10 times more likely to complete suicide than those not diagnosed with it. The researchers also found that people diagnosed with acute stress reaction and depression or acute stress reaction and substance abuse had a greater rate of suicide.
Jaimie Gradus, DSc, MPH, an epidemiologist with VA Boston Healthcare System, assistant professor of epidemiology at BUSPH, and lead author on the study, said the paper is part of a series examining traumatic reaction diagnoses and their association with suicide. This is the first study to specifically look at the association between acute stress reaction and suicide, Gradus said.
“People who experience a trauma or have acute stress reaction seem to be at an increased risk of committing suicide, but additional research needs to be done to replicate the association,” said Gradus, who is also an assistant professor of psychiatry at BU School of Medicine.
Last year, Gradus, who conducted the study while completing her doctorate in epidemiology at BUSPH, was awarded the Lilienfeld Student Paper Prize by the Society of Epidemiologic Research for her paper, “The Association between Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Completed Suicide in the Adult Population of Denmark.”
A person is diagnosed with acute stress reaction following a traumatic experience, such as witnessing a death or being in a serious accident. Symptoms, which can include shaking, feeling that objects are unreal, irritability and problems breathing, appear within 48 hours of the event.
The authors studied 9,612 cases of suicide and 199,306 controls matched by gender, date of birth and time, taken from the nationwide Danish health and administrative registries between 1994 and 2006.
They found that 95 of the suicide cases (.99%) had acute stress reaction, compared with 165 of the controls (.08%), corresponding to a 10-times higher risk for people with acute stress reaction.
Co-authors of the study include Timothy Lash, DSc, MPH, associate professor of epidemiology at BUSPH; Henrik Toft Sørensen, MD, PhD, adjunct professor of epidemiology at BUSPH; Ping Qin, MD, PhD, MPH, associate professor of the National Centre for Register-based Research at Aarhus University in Denmark; Elizabeth Lawler, DSc, of the Department of Medicine, Harvard University; Alisa K. Lincoln, PhD, MPH, an associate professor of the health sciences and sociology at Northeastern University; Matthew Miller, ScD, MPH, MD, an associate professor of health policy and management at Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard University.
The full study is available online.
This story was submitted by Elana Zak