Suicide and suicidal behaviour strongly contribute to overall male youth mortality. An understanding of worldwide data contextualises suicide and suicidal behaviour in young men within any given country.

Members and colleagues of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry’s Task Force on Men’s Mental Health review the relevant data from several regions of the world. The review identifies notable findings across regions of relevance to researchers, policymakers, and clinicians.

Male suicide and suicidal behaviour in adolescence and emerging adulthood within North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, Continental Africa, South Asia, East Asia, China, and Oceania share similarities as well as significant points of divergence.

International data provide an opportunity to obtain a superior understanding of suicide and suicidal behaviour amongst young men.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability and premature mortality. This study compared the overall survival (OS) between patients with MDD and non-MDD controls stratified by gender, age, and comorbidities.

This nationwide population-based cohort study utilized longitudinal patient data (01/01/2010 – 12/31/2020) from the Hungarian National Health Insurance Fund database, which contains healthcare service data for the Hungarian population. Patients with MDD were selected and matched 1:1 to those without MDD using exact matching. The rates of conversion from MDD to bipolar disorder (BD) or schizophrenia were also investigated.

Overall, 471,773 patients were included in each of the matched MDD and non-MDD groups. Patients with MDD had significantly worse OS than non-MDD controls (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.50; 95% CI: 1.48−1.51; males HR = 1.69, 95% CI: 1.66–1.72; females HR = 1.40, 95% CI: 1.38–1.42). The estimated life expectancy of patients with MDD was 7.8 and 6.0 years less than that of controls aged 20 and 45 years, respectively. Adjusted analyses based on the presence of baseline comorbidities also showed that patients with MDD had worse survival than non-MDD controls (adjusted HR = 1.29, 95% CI: 1.28–1.31). After 11 years of follow-up, the cumulative conversions from MDD to BD and schizophrenia were 6.8 and 3.4%, respectively. Converted patients had significantly worse OS than non-converted patients.

Compared with the non-MDD controls, a higher mortality rate in patients with MDD, especially in those with comorbidities and/or who have converted to BD or schizophrenia, suggests that early detection and personalized treatment of MDD may reduce the mortality in patients diagnosed with MDD.

Hungarians exhibit more negative attitudes toward help-seeking for mental health problems compared to other European countries. However, research on help-seeking in Hungary is limited, and it is unclear how stigma relates to help-seeking when considering demographic and clinical characteristics. We used a network analytic approach to simulate a stigma model using hypothesized constructs in a sizable sample of Hungarian adults.

Participants were 345 adults recruited from nine primary care offices across Hungary. Participants completed self-report measures assessing public stigma, self-stigma, experiential avoidance (EA), attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help, anxiety, depression, demographics, prior use of mental health services, and whether they have a family member or friend with a mental health condition.

EA and anxiety were the most central nodes in the network. The network also revealed associations between greater EA with greater public stigma, anxiety, depression, and having a family member or friend with a mental health condition. More positive attitudes toward seeking help were associated with lower self-stigma, public stigma, and having received psychological treatment in their lifetime. Being female was associated with lower income, higher education, and having received psychological treatment in their lifetime. Finally, having a family member or friend with a mental health condition was associated with having received psychological treatment in their lifetime and greater public stigma.

The strength centrality and associations of EA with clinical covariates and public stigma implicate its importance in stigma models. Findings also suggest that while some aspects of existing stigma models are retained in countries like Hungary, other aspects may diverge.

It is unclear whether there is a direct link between economic crises and changes in suicide rates.

The Lopez-Ibor Foundation launched an initiative to study the possible impact of the economic crisis on European suicide rates.

Data was gathered and analysed from 29 European countries and included the number of deaths by suicide in men and women, the unemployment rate, the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, the annual economic growth rate and inflation.

There was a strong correlation between suicide rates and all economic indices except GPD per capita in men but only a correlation with unemployment in women. However, the increase in suicide rates occurred several months before the economic crisis emerged.

Overall, this study confirms a general relationship between the economic environment and suicide rates; however, it does not support there being a clear causal relationship between the current economic crisis and an increase in the suicide rate.

White matter hyperintensities (WMHs) are one the most common neuroimaging findings in patients with bipolar disorder (BD). It has been suggested that WMHs are associated with impaired insight in schizophrenia and schizoaffective patients; however, the relationship between insight and WMHs in BD type I has not been directly investigated.

Patients with BD-I (148) were recruited and underwent brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Affective symptoms were assessed using Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS) and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS17); the presence of impaired insight was based on the corresponding items of YMRS and HDRS17.

Multiple punctate periventricular WMHs (PWMHs) and deep WMHs (DWMHs) were observed in 49.3% and 39.9% of the cases, respectively. Subjects with lower insight for mania had significantly more PWMHs (54.6% vs 22.2%; p < 0.05) when compared to BD-I patients with higher insight for mania. The presence of PWMHs was independently associated with lower insight for mania: patients who denied illness according to the YMRS were 4 times more likely to have PWMHs (95% CI: 1.21/13.42) than other patients.

Impaired insight in BD-I is associated with periventricular WMHs. The early identification of BD-I subjects with PWMHs and impaired insight may be crucial for clinicians.