The authors undertook a field test of Motto and colleagues' Risk
Estimator for Suicide by selecting a subset (N = 593) of psychiatric
patients with major or chronic affective disorder that corresponded to
Motto's sample. They rated each subject on Motto's scale, using
standardized data collected at hospital admission. Fourteen patients (2.4%)
in their sample and 136 (4.9%) in Motto's sample died by suicide within 2
years. The authors tested the null hypothesis of a uniform suicide risk
across all 10 deciles of risk scores by comparing observed and expected
frequencies of suicide using the variance test for homogeneity of the
binomial distribution. Their findings raise questions about Motto's risk
scale but do not definitively invalidate it.
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