Risk Factors for Suicide, Presuicidal Syndrome, Crisis Intervention

1. Overview & Epidemiology

• Suicide = intentional, self-inflicted death — a human-specific behaviour with biological, psychological and social roots. Identification of the potentially suicidal patient is considered the most difficult task in psychiatry (Frecska, DE lecture).
• A complex, multicausal phenomenon: not a "normal" response to stress, nor a simple linear consequence of mental illness. Suicide and attempts are very rare in the absence of a current major mental disorder (Rihmer).

Hungarian / European epidemiology (exam context)

• Hungary historically has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Debrecen lecture figures: **~24 / 100,000 completed sui