Analysis of Aftercare and Associated Factors for Repeated Suicide Attempt: An Application of a Semiparametric Transformation Cure Model

• Activity Number: 621
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 2, 2012 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Statistics in Mental Health Research
• Author(s): Chen-Hsin Chen*+ and Wei-Hwa Chang and Chia-Ming Chang and Ming-Been Lee
• Companies: Academia Sinica and Taiwan Suicide Prevention Center and Chang Gung University and National Taiwan University
• Keywords: Aftercare ; Mixture regression ; Suicide attempt ; Suicide surveillance ; Susceptibility ; Transformation cure model

Abstract

The National Suicide Surveillance System (NSSS) in Taiwan was established in 2006 for collecting and analyzing the information of suicide attempters, and providing aftercares to prevent their repeated attempts. This study followed up with 51182 subjects registered in the NSSS during 2006-2008. Information about whether these attempters had consented at the index attempt to receive aftercares and actually received aftercares were recorded in the NSSS with multiple factors such as gender, age, history of mental disorders and suicide attempt methods. Kaplan-Meier's survival curve of the first repetition flattens to a level plateau as the probability of non-susceptibility and implies those index attempters who have not experienced reattempt would either have a reattempt later or be non-susceptible to the event afterward. We utilize a semiparametric transformation cure model to identify respective significant factors for the repetition probability of an index attempter and the time elapsed between the index attempt and a subsequent attempt of a susceptible re-attempter. Receipt of aftercare was significantly associated with reduced probability of repetition and delayed reattempts.