[Contribution to the study of suicide prevention. Study of a group of 372 subjects from 28 to 35 years after attempted suicide].

The authors have treated the subsequent lives of 372 suicide attempters and have made a new follow-up study 28 to 35 years after the suicide attempt. They reveal a general excess deathrate in this sample of medical, surgical and psychiatric clinic patients, and a considerable excess deathrate by suicide as compared with the population as a whole. These two types of excess deathrate persist throughout the follow-up period. Conclusions on suicide prevention are drawn from the results. After describing the three main groups of dead, deceased by suicide, and living subjects, the authors compare those deceased by suicide with those deceased from other causes, and those deceased by suicide with subjects of the other two groups in search of possible group characteristics of potential predictive value. The results of this analysis are somewhat disappointing; discussion of the research leads to criticism of the contradictory results obtained by previous studies in this field. Analysis of subjects still alive at the close of the follow-up period shows that their psychopathological evolution is relatively favourable, with the exception of a group of patients identifiable by a set of distinctive negative factors.