Recommended care for young people (15-19 years) after suicide attempts in certain European countries

Abstract Data on recommended care for young people aged 15±19 years after attempted suicide from nine European research centres dur- ing the period 1989±1992 were ana- lysed in terms of gender, history of previous suicide attempt and meth- ods used. Altogether 438 suicide attempts made by 353 boys and 1,102 suicide attempts made by 941 girls were included. Analyses of the total data from all centres showed that young people with a history of previous suicide attempt and those using violent methods had signi®- cantly higher chance of being rec- ommended aftercare than ®rst-time attempters or those choosing self- poisoning. There were no signi®cant di€erences of being recommended care between genders. Logistic re- gression analyses of the material were performed and the results were similar. Both having previous at- tempted suicide (odds ratio 2.0, 95% CI 1.53±2.61) and using ``hard'' methods (odds ratio 1.71, 95% CI 1.49±1.96) were signi®cantly associ- ated with increased possibility of being recommended aftercare. When individual centres were analysed, large disparities of recommended care after suicide attempts were found and there were no uniform criteria of recommending care for young suicide attempters in Europe. Key words Young people ± attempted suicide ± method ± recommended car