Does Compulsory Admission Prevent Inpatient Suicide Among Patients with Schizophrenia? A Nationwide Cohort Study in Taiwan

Objective The aim of this study was to analyze the risk of inpatient suicide in patients with schizophrenia during 2007–2013 and to determine putative risk factors. Methods We conducted a national population‐based cohort study of 2,038 psychiatric inpatients in their first compulsory admission, matched with 8,152 controls who were voluntary inpatients. Only patients with schizophrenia were included in the study. We used data derived from the Taiwanese National Health Insurance Database 2005, comprising 1 million beneficiaries randomly selected from the entire population of Taiwan. Results During the follow‐up period, 23 and 75 inpatient suicides were observed in the compulsory and control groups, respectively. Kaplan–Meier curves showed that the cumulative incidence rate of inpatient suicide was not significantly different between compulsory and voluntary admissions (log‐rank test, p = .206). Conclusions Our results suggest that compulsory admission has no protective effects on risk reduction of inpatient suicide for patients with schizophrenia who are compulsorily admitted compared with voluntarily admitted controls. Clinicians should be more alert for the prevention of inpatient suicide among patients with schizophrenia and consider the close monitoring of inpatient suicide risk in the first week of admission.