Subtypes of schizophrenics patients with suicidal intent

Abstract

Introduction: During the last decades, numerous research works have tried to determine what risk factors are associated with the schizophrenic patient’s suicidal behavior but they have yielded contradictory results. Thus we hypothesized that these results’ variability could be due, among other reasons, to the heterogeneity of suicidal schizophrenic population.

Material and method: Thirty-two Schizophrenics patients who had made Attempted suicide were studied. They were assessed through a battery of Clinical scales for negative, positive, hopelessness, insight and depressive symptoms.

Results: Two suicidal subtypes were identified according to the reasons that patients stated for attempting suicide. These two subtypes showed significant differences in two of the analyzed variables, namely hopelessness and PANSS positive subscale.

Discussion: Clinical implications coming from these results are discussed in the present paper.