Practical care for suicide attempters at emergency department

Abstract

In this review, we summarized present knowledge on an appropriate care for suicide attempters admitted to emergency department (ED) in Japan. Our systematic review and meta-analysis previously revealed that the pooled prevalence proportion of suicide attempters in ED was approximately 5.0%. As expected, most of the suicide attempters in ED had psychiatric disorders, such as mood disorders. On the other hand, a large-scale randomized controlled multicenter trial, ACTION-J study, recently demonstrated that assertive case management was effective for reducing the incidence of repetition of suicide attempts among suicide attempters with psychiatric disorders admitted to ED. In order to conduct this assertive case management effectively, the collaboration between ED and the department of psychiatry is required. However, the number of such hospitals is limited in Japan. To promote the evidence based care for suicide attempters admitted to ED, it is necessary to strengthen the collaboration and develop a system to provide appropriate care services.