Incidence and method of suicide in hospitals in the United States

2018

(For resources, this is the publication date. For programs, this is the date posted.)

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Article/Chapter
Williams SC, Schmaltz SP, Castro GM, Baker DW.
The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety

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Incidence and method of suicide in hospitals in the US (250.27 KB)

Using data from the National Violent Data Reporting System (NVDRS) and the Joint Commission’s Sentinel Event database (SE), the Joint Commission estimated the number of hospital inpatient suicides in the Unites States ranged from 48.5 to 64.9 per year. This is far below the widely cited figure of 1,500 per year. Overwhelmingly, the leading cause of inpatient suicide death was hanging (65%), supporting the recommendation from a recent Joint Commission Expert Panel that all psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric inpatient units in general medical/surgical hospitals should be made ligature-resistant.