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Prevalence and correlates of non-fatal suicidal behaviour among South Africans

School of Social Work and Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Dan J. Stein, MD, PhD

Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

Soraya Seedat, MD

Department of Psychiatry, University of Stellenbosch, Cape Town

Allen Herman, MD, PhD

National School of Public Health, South Africa

David R. Williams, PhD, MPH

School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Correspondence: Dr Sean Joe, School of Social Work, University of Michigan, 1080 South University Avenue, Room 2780, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA. Email: sjoe{at}ssw.umich.edu

Declaration of interest

None. Funding detailed in Acknowledgements.

^a Since the institutions in South Africa were once controlled along legally defined racial categories which separated `Blacks' into `Indians', `Coloureds' and `Africans', their daily experience and consequent psychiatric or physical health patterns could not be described without recourse to such racial terminology.¹ The use of these terms in this paper does not imply their legitimacy.

We examined nationally representative data from the 2002–2004 South Africa Stress and Health Study, a national household probability sample of 4351 persons aged 18 years and older: 9.1% of respondents reported lifetime suicide ideation, 3.8% a plan and 2.9% an attempt. Among four ethnic groups, the Coloured^a group had the highest lifetime prevalence for attempts (7.1%). Those at higher risk of suicide attempts had one or more DSM–IV disorders.