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Using machine learning to predict suicide in the 30 days after discharge from psychiatric hospital in Denmark

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2021

Tammy Jiang*
Affiliation:
Department of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Public Health, Massachusetts, USA
Anthony J. Rosellini
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Massachusetts, USA
Erzsébet Horváth-Puhó
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark
Brian Shiner
Affiliation:
National Center for PTSD, White River Junction Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Vermont, USA
Amy E. Street
Affiliation:
Women's Health Sciences Division, National Center for PTSD, VA Boston Healthcare System, Massachusetts, USA
Timothy L. Lash
Affiliation:
Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Georgia, USA
Henrik T. Sørensen
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Epidemiology, Aarhus University, Denmark
Jaimie L. Gradus
Affiliation:
Department of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Public Health, Massachusetts, USA
*
Correspondence: Tammy Jiang. Email: tjiang1@bu.edu
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Abstract

Background

Suicide risk is high in the 30 days after discharge from psychiatric hospital, but knowledge of the profiles of high-risk patients remains limited.

Aims

To examine sex-specific risk profiles for suicide in the 30 days after discharge from psychiatric hospital, using machine learning and Danish registry data.

Method

We conducted a case–cohort study capturing all suicide cases occurring in the 30 days after psychiatric hospital discharge in Denmark from 1 January 1995 to 31 December 2015 (n = 1205). The comparison subcohort was a 5% random sample of all persons born or residing in Denmark on 1 January 1995, and who had a first psychiatric hospital admission between 1995 and 2015 (n = 24 559). Predictors included diagnoses, surgeries, prescribed medications and demographic information. The outcome was suicide death recorded in the Danish Cause of Death Registry.

Results

For men, prescriptions for anxiolytics and drugs used in addictive disorders interacted with other characteristics in the risk profiles (e.g. alcohol-related disorders, hypnotics and sedatives) that led to higher risk of postdischarge suicide. In women, there was interaction between recurrent major depression and other characteristics (e.g. poisoning, low income) that led to increased risk of suicide. Random forests identified important suicide predictors: alcohol-related disorders and nicotine dependence in men and poisoning in women.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that accurate prediction of suicide during the high-risk period immediately after psychiatric hospital discharge may require a complex evaluation of multiple factors for men and women.

Information

Type
Paper
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists
Figure 0

Table 1 Characteristics of the suicide cases and the subcohort, Denmark, 1 January 1995

Figure 1

Fig. 1 Classification tree depicting suicide predictors among male patients hospitalised for psychiatric disorders in Denmark, 1995–2015. Each shaded rectangular bin at the bottom (terminal node) represents the group of people with the characteristic profile in the branches above. Within the rectangular bins, n indicates the number of people who had the characteristic profile, and risk indicates the proportion of people in that bin who died by suicide. aPoisoning by, adverse effect of and underdosing of drugs, medications and biological substances.

Figure 2

Fig. 2 Classification tree depicting suicide predictors among female patients hospitalised for psychiatric disorders in Denmark, 1995–2015. Each shaded rectangular bin at the bottom (terminal node) represents the group of people with the characteristic profile in the branches above. Within the rectangular bins, n indicates the number of people who had the characteristic profile, and risk indicates the proportion of people in that bin who died by suicide. aPoisoning by, adverse effect of and underdosing of drugs, medications and biological substances.

Figure 3

Fig. 3 Variable importance of suicide predictors among male patients hospitalised for psychiatric disorders in Denmark from split sample cross-validation, 1995–2015. The dark blue dots represent the mean decrease in accuracy (MDA) value in fold one, and the light blue dots represent the MDA value in fold two. The vertical line represents the average of the MDA values of all predictors with nonzero MDA values in folds one and two (3.8). The predictors shown in bold were in the top 30 predictors in folds 1 and 2 for men.

Figure 4

Fig. 4 Variable importance of suicide predictors among female patients hospitalised for psychiatric disorders in Denmark from split sample cross-validation, 1995–2015. The dark blue dots represent the mean decrease in accuracy (MDA) value in fold one, and the light blue dots represent the MDA value in fold two. The vertical line represents the average of the MDA values of all predictors with nonzero MDA values in folds one and two (2.9). The predictors shown in bold were in the top 30 predictors in folds 1 and 2 for women.

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