What is it about?
This study analyzes all adults discharged home from a large emergency department in Alicante, Spain, over five years, and identifies who died within 30 days, focusing on suicides. It describes how often this happened, which patients were most affected, and what clinical features and histories they had.
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Why is it important?
Although suicides after discharge were rare, those who died by suicide were mostly older men with psychiatric histories, often not identified as high‑risk in the emergency visit. Recognizing these patterns can help improve screening, follow‑up, and brief risk‑detection tools in emergency settings to prevent deaths soon after discharge
Perspectives
These findings are a stark reminder that many adults at real risk of suicide pass through the emergency department without their suffering being fully seen. The fact that several died within days, often after visits for physical complaints, reinforces the need for simple, systematic suicide‑risk questions and closer links between emergency, primary care, and mental health teams.
Lucia Gallego Deike
Universidad Internacional de la Rioja
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Suicide in adults within 30 days of discharge from hospital emergency department, Internal and Emergency Medicine, April 2025, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s11739-025-03921-7.
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