Cancer Patients at Increased Risk for Suicide Within a Year After Diagnosis

Patients with cancer are at an increased risk of suicide in the first year after diagnosis compared with the general population,according to areport in the journalCancer. The risk differs by type of cancer, with pancreatic and lung cancer having the highest risk.“After the diagnosis, it is important that health care providers be vigilant in screening for suicide and ensuring that patients have access to social and emotional support,” wrote Anas M. Saad, M.D., of Ain Shams University, Cairo, and colleagues.Using data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program, the researchers calculated observed/expected (O/E) risk ratios for more than 4 million patients diagnosed with cancer between 2004 and 2014 in the United States. The O/E risk ratio represents the observed number of patients who died from suicide in the first year after diagnosis compared with a demographically similar population within the same period. Mortality data for the general population were collected by the National Center for Health Statistics.A total of 1,005,825 cancer patients died within the first year after their diagnosis. Suicide was the cause of death for 1,585 of these patients (0.16%). The O/E risk ratio for cancer patients was 2.52, representing a more than two-and-a-half times greater risk of suicide than in the general population.The patients with the highest increases in suicide rates were those who had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer or lung cancer: their O/E rat...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: cancer cancer diagnosis Journal Cancer quality of life social support suicide suicide risk after diagnosis Source Type: research