Women in their 20s are the largest group among patients after suicide attempts in Japan

Nation‘S first suicide attempt data tracking system found that women in their 20s constituted the largest group among patients referred to the emergency room after a suicide attempt.

Additionally, drug overdose was the most common method used by both male and female patients.

The Japanese Society of Emergency Medicine (JSEM) and other sites released a report containing data collected by the tracking system on nearly 2,000 cases in which patients were taken by ambulance to hospitals or emergency centers after attempting suicide or self-harm.

“I hope that more medical institutions will participate in our program in the coming years, as access to more cases will enable us to analyze them by region and timeline,” said Yasufumi Miyake, Professor of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Teikyo University School of Medicine, who played a leading role in the design of the system.

“I hope that our efforts will help in the future to provide assistance to people who have attempted suicide and develop suicide prevention measures,” he said.

The World Health Organization is calling on countries to establish systems to collect and manage data on suicide attempts previous suicide attempts are considered a key risk factor for suicide.

The Department of Health’s white paper on suicide prevention also shows that around 20 percent of people who commit suicide have already attempted to do so in the past.

However, Japan had none tracking suicide attempts system until recently.

JSEM worked with the Japan Suicide Prevention Promotion Center (JSCP), a group authorized by the health minister, to create a system for recording cases in which patients were transported by ambulance to emergency rooms or intensive care centers after attempting suicide or self-harm. Pity.

The system, the first nationwide and continuous program of its kind in Japan, became operational in 2022.

As of December last year, fifty-seven of all 304 intensive care centers in Japan were participating in the system.

The latest report is a summary of data collected over the first year or so of the system’s operation.

The report shows that between December 2022 and December 2023, 1,987 cases were registered in the system.

The patients included 733 men, who made up about 37 percent of cases, and 1,254 women, making up about 63 percent.

By age group, patients in their 20s accounted for the most cases with 570, or 28 percent of the total, followed by patients in their 30s with 334, or about 17 percent.

Both by gender and age group, the most women were in their 20s – 398. Among patients in their teens and 20s, women were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed as men.

Drug overdoses were the most common cause of suicide attempts or self-harm. This method was used by 297 men, i.e. 40 percent of men, and 858 women, i.e. 68 percent of patients.

After being taken to emergency centers, 1,571, or 79 percent of all patients, were hospitalized, and 237 others, or 12 percent, went home.

More than 70 percent of patients, including those who were referred to the psychiatric unit from the emergency department, received specialist care.