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Poor sleep quality increased suicide risk

New data published in JAMA Psychiatry suggest that an increased risk for suicide is associated with poor sleep quality in older adults.

Rebecca A. Bernert, PhD, of the Stanford University School of Medicine, evaluated 420 adults (400 controls and 20 who died by suicide) aged at least 65 years to determine the effect of sleep quality on suicide risk.

Ninety-five percent of participants who died by suicide were male. Death by firearm was the most common form of suicide (n=13). Firearm was also the most common form of attempted suicide (62%), followed by hanging (9.5%), cutting (9.5%), poisoning (4.8%), drowning (4.8%), lethal jump (4.8%) and suffocation (4.8%).

An increased risk for death by suicide was predicted by self-reported sleep quality at baseline (P<.001). At the 10-year follow-up, the association between poor sleep quality at baseline and increased risk for death by suicide remained statistically significant (P<.05).

“In conclusion, findings from this study indicate that, independent of depressed mood, subjective sleep quality serves as a risk factor for suicide during a 10-year observation period,” the researchers wrote. “We suggest that poor subjective sleep quality may therefore represent a useful screening tool and a novel therapeutic target for suicide prevention in late life. Sleep disturbances have been included in the 2013 Veterans Affairs-Department of Defense clinical practice guidelines for patients at risk for suicide, and findings from this study suggest rationale for their inclusion in similar evidence-based suicide risk assessment frameworks, intervention strategies, and clinical practice guidelines.”

Disclosure: The study was funded in part by the CDC, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.