Am J Psychiatry 1987; 144:923-926
Copyright © 1987 by American Psychiatric Association
A field test of Motto's risk estimator for suicide
DC Clark, MA Young, WA Scheftner, J Fawcett and L Fogg
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.
