Concussion due to everyday and recreational activities triples long-term suicide risk. The risk increases even further if these injuries occur during the weekend, results of a large study show. “The increased risk applied regardless of demographic characteristics, was independent of past psychiatric conditions, became accentuated with time, followed a dose-response gradient and was not as high as the risk associated with past suicide attempts,” the investigators, led by Donald Redelmeier, MD, senior core scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and a physician at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Canada, write.
The researchers, who studied the records of more than 230,000 patients with concussion covering a 20-year period, add that “regardless of interpretation, these findings suggest that an association between concussion and suicide is not confined to the military.” The study was published online February 8 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.