Differences in Incidence and Risks of Suicide Attempt and Suicidal Drug Overdose between Patients with Epilepsy with and without Comorbid Depression

Chi-Yu Lin, Tomor Harnod, Cheng-Li Lin, Wei-Chih Shen and Chia-Hung Kao
Additional contact information
Chi-Yu Lin: Stroke Care Center and Department of Neurology, Yumin Hospital, Nantou 542, Taiwan
Tomor Harnod: Department of Neurosurgery, Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital, Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, Hualien 970, Taiwan
Cheng-Li Lin: Management Office for Health Data, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung 404472, Taiwan
Wei-Chih Shen: Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Asia University, Taichung 41354, Taiwan
Chia-Hung Kao: Graduate Institute of Biomedical Sciences and School of Medicine, College of Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 22, 1-12

Abstract: Objective : To determine the differences in the incidences and risks of suicide attempt (SA) and suicidal drug overdose (SDO) between patients with epilepsy with and without comorbid depression by using data from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Research Database. Methods : We analyzed data of patients (≥20 years) who had received epilepsy diagnoses between 2000 and 2012; the diagnosis date of epilepsy was defined as the index date. The epilepsy patients were divided into the cohorts, with and without comorbid depression, and compared against a cohort from the non-affected population. We calculated adjusted hazard ratios and the corresponding 95% confidence intervals for SA and SDO in the three cohorts after adjustment for age, sex, and comorbidities. Results : The incidences of SA and SDO in the cohort with epilepsy and depression were 42.9 and 97.4 per 10,000 person-years, respectively. The epilepsy with depression cohort had 21.3 times of SA risk; and 22.9 times of SDO risk than did the comparison cohort had a 6.03-fold increased risk of SA and a 2.56-fold increased risk of SDO than did the epilepsy patients without depression. Moreover, patients’ age <65 years, and female sex would further increase the risk of SA in patients with epilepsy and comorbid depression. Conclusion : Risks of SA and SDO in patients with epilepsy are proportionally increased when depression is coexisted. Our findings provide crucial information for clinicians and the government for suicide prevention and to question whether prescribing a large number of medications to patients with epilepsy and depression is safe.

Keywords: cohort study; depression; epilepsy; suicide; National Health Insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/22/4533/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/22/4533/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:22:p:4533-:d:287599

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().