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‘The Health of the Nation’: suicide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

John Crammer*
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill London SE5 8AF Crammer
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The study of fatal suicides in York, 1990–1994, by Elwood & De Silva (1998) is valuable confirmation that other people than general practitioners (GPs) and psychiatrists have responsibilities in averting such deaths, but does not go far enough. It is assumed that the GP or general hospital doctor has failed to recognise the suicidal risk, and better teaching would have increased their diagnostic awareness and so saved lives. But examining the detailed sequence of events leading up to death (medical audit) will show that in a number of cases medical diagnosis was not lacking, and the problem lay elsewhere.

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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Copyright © 1998 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

References

Elwood, P. Y. & De Silva, P. (1998) The Health of the Nation’: suicide and the general hospital doctor. Psychiatric Bulletin, 22, 150152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, M. G. (1979) Death Wishes? Understanding and Management of Deliberate Self-Harm. Chichester Wiley.Google Scholar
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