Risk of suicide in twins: 51 year follow up study

doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7411.373

BMJ 2003;327:373-374 (16 August), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7411.373

Paper

Risk of suicide in twins: 51 year follow up study

Cecilia Tomassini, research fellow¹, Knud Juel, senior scientist², Niels V Holm, consultant³, Axel Skytthe, senior scientist³, Kaare Christensen, professor³

¹ Centre for Population Studies, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London WC1 E7HT, ² National Institute of Public Health, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark, ³ Danish Twin Registry, Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Sdr Boulevard 23A, DK-5000 Odense, Denmark

Correspondence to: K Christensen kchristensen@health.sdu.dk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Introduction

Strong family ties and commitments are known to be importantin the prevention of suicide. Having parents alive and together,being married, and having young children are negatively correlatedwith risk of suicide.^1-3 The presence of siblings, however,has rarely been looked at in studies of suicide or attemptedsuicide. A Danish register study found no protective effectassociated with having siblings,¹ but neither the age northe sex of siblings was considered. Twins represent a uniquesibling relationship. They not only share the same family andsocial environment at least for the first part of their lives,but they also show a higher level of closeness both in termsof the number of years spent together before leaving the parentalhome and in the frequency of contacts afterwards. We investigatedwhether the suicide rate in twins was different to that in the general population.

Participants, methods, and results

Through the population based Danish . . . [Full text of this article]

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Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

The study of suicide in twins did exlude the genetic basis for suicide...But ?: AK Al-Sheikhli
bmj.com, 15 Aug 2003 [Full text]
No protective effect is needed to explain the findings: Thomas J Verberne
bmj.com, 18 Aug 2003 [Full text]
Suicide rate and intelligence of twins and singletons: Martin Voracek
bmj.com, 20 Aug 2003 [Full text]
The social side of suicide: Gerald D. Sack
bmj.com, 4 Sep 2003 [Full text]