Background: Suicide is one of the important causes of death among various age groups. Suicide is associated with stressful life events and identifying these risk factors at the earliest can be helpful in preventing further suicidal attempts in the future. Aim and Objectives: To study lethality, prior risk behaviour associated with suicide attempt and to study psychiatric morbidity among patients who have attempted suicide. Settings &Design : This is a cross sectional study conducted using purposive sampling on patients recruited from outpatient,Department of Psychiatry, S.V.Medical college, Tirupati.Methods &Material:100 consecutive patients who have attempted suicide were assessed using MINI International Neuropsychiatric Interview to screen the patients having psychiatric problems.Diagnosis was confirmed using ICD 10. Presumptive Stressful Life Events Scale and Expanded risk rescue rating scales were applied on the patients. Statistical analysis used : Descriptive statistics were used and to test association between the groups chi-square test was usedResults: Among the subjects who have attempted suicide, the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity was 64% with 29%of patients having substance use disorder,25% having depression,8% having psychotic disorder and 2% having personality disorder.43% of patients have moderate risk of death and 45% of patients have high to moderate risk of death. Likelihood of rescue was low to moderate in 42% of patients, high in 34% of patients and moderate in 20% of patients. There is significant association between psychiatric morbidity and risk of death (p-value=0.001). There is no significant association between the number of stressful life events and risk of death(p-value=0.20). Conclusions: Patients who have attempted Suicide were more among females, lower education, unemployment and having rural background. Poisoning and medication overdose were more common methods.

Suicide, risk-rescue, stressful events