Epileptics ‘at heightened suicide risk’

People with epilepsy are reportedly up to three times more likely to commit suicide than the general population.

A new study by European researchers shows that epilepsy sufferers who have been diagnosed with the condition in the last six months are five more times likely to take their own lives.

But the report, published in the Lancet Neurology journal, acknowledges that once socioeconomic factors are considered, people with epilepsy are at a two-fold risk of committing suicide.

Scientists from Aarhus University Hospital studied 21,169 cases of suicide in Denmark between 1981 and 1997 to arrive at their findings.

These results were matched against 423,128 control cases on the grounds of sex, birth year and calendar date.

Almost 500 of the people who committed suicide were found to have epilepsy, a rate three times higher than that found among the controls.

“Individuals with epilepsy have a higher risk of suicide, even if co-existing psychiatric disease, demographic differences, and socioeconomic factors are taken into account,” the researchers write.

“Our study identifies people with newly diagnosed epilepsy as a vulnerable group that require special attention.”