paper 1. Suicidality in hospitalized early psychosis patients at time of discharge

The purpose of this study was to investigate the presence and nature of suicidal risk among early psychosis patients at the time of discharge from hospital. Is it only related to the involvement of a suicidal attempt at admission? Thirty such patients, who were admitted after a suicide attempt were compared with 30 patients similarly diagnosed, but admitted for clinical reasons not involving a suicide attempt. Dependent measures of psychopathology, adjustment and suicidality were used. It was found that the two groups did not differ in suicidality, which was measured by the Scale of Impact of Suicidality - Management, Assessment and Planning of Care (SIS-MAP). We also compared low and high SIS-MAP scorers in the entire sample. It was found that male gender, older age of onset of illness, alcoholism, cannabis abuse and acuity of the clinical state were predictive of higher suicidality scores. This highlights the need to attend to suicide prevention during follow-up care of these patients on leaving hospital, whether or not a suicidal attempt was present in the index episode.

Paper 2 Resilience, psychopathology and hospitalization: Findings from the pilot phase of a study of re-hospitalization in a tertiary psychiatric facility

ABSTRACT In order to investigate whether lower resilience contributes to re-hospitalization, we compared 12 first admissions with 22 re-admissions with measures of resilience, psychopathology, suicidality and life stress. The two groups only differed significantly on higher clinician–rated depression among first admissions. Within the entire group (n=32), there were highly significant correlations of resilience with life events in the past year (r=.41, p<.01) and suicidality (r=.42, p<.001). The individual response to stress is implicated in the latter two variables. Hence, a preventive strategy for repeated hospitalization needs to address specific areas of vulnerability on a case by case basis with the overall objective of bolstering resilience.