Am J Psychiatry 1995; 152:1520-1522
Copyright © 1995 by American Psychiatric Association
Use of prescription psychotropic drugs among suicide victims in New York City
PM Marzuk, K Tardiff, AC Leon, CS Hirsch, M Stajic, N Hartwell and L Portera
Department of Psychiatry, Cornell University Medical College, New York, NY 10021, USA.
OBJECTIVE: The authors examined the rate of prescription psychotropic drug
use among suicide victims at the time of their death. METHOD: From a total
of 1,970 suicides that occurred in New York City from 1990 to 1992, 1,635
cases that had a complete toxicologic analysis and an injury-death interval
of 48 hours or less were assessed at autopsy for the presence of commonly
prescribed antidepressants and neuroleptics. RESULTS: Prescription
psychotropic medications were detected in only 16.4% (N = 268) of the
suicide victims studied. Demographic factors associated with use of these
drugs included female gender and white race. Poisoning accounted for 17.9%
(N = 293) of all suicides studied, but antidepressants or neuroleptics were
detected in less than half of these victims. Among all suicide victims in
whom an antidepressant or neuroleptic was detected, almost half had used
lethal methods other than poisoning. CONCLUSIONS: In this study, most
individuals who committed suicide in New York City were not taking
prescription psychotropic medications at the time of their death and either
were not receiving pharmacotherapy or were noncompliant.
