CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 218Suicide and Self-Harm StudiesPsychiatric care and mental health servicesHomicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse

Can Postdischarge Follow-Up Contacts Prevent Suicide and Suicidal Behavior?: A Review of the Evidence

Luxton, David D., June, Jennifer D., Comtois, Katherine Anne·2013·Crisis
DOI 10.1027/0227-5910/a000158
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Background: The time period following discharge from inpatient psychiatry and emergency department (ED) treatment is one of heightened risk for repeat suicide attempts for patients. Evidence reported in the literature shows that follow-up contacts might reduce suicide risk, although there has not been a comprehensive and critical review of the evidence to date. Aims: To evaluate evidence for the effectiveness of suicide prevention interventions that involve follow-up contacts with patients. Methods: Published empirical studies of follow-up interventions with suicidal behaviors (suicide, attempts, and ideation) as outcomes were searched. Study populations were inpatient psychiatric or ED patients being discharged to home. Contact modalities included phone, postal letter, postcards, in-person, and technology-based methods (e-mail and texting). Results: Eight original studies, two follow-up studies, and one secondary analysis study met inclusion criteria. Five studies showed a statistically significant reduction in suicidal behavior. Four studies showed mixed results with trends toward a preventative effect and two studies did not show a preventative effect. Conclusions: Repeated follow-up contacts appear to reduce suicidal behavior. More research is needed, however, especially randomized controlled trials, to determine what specific factors might make follow-up contact modalities or methods more effective than others.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1027/0227-5910/a000158

Cites

67 of 67 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Although randomized clinical trials on follow-up interventions for suicidal patients are scarce, existing research generally suggests follow-up contacts may reduce repeat suicide attempts and prevent death by suicide for patients discharged from inpatient or emergency departments.

    “Although there is a paucity of randomized clinical trials on follow-up interventions for suicidal patients, existing research generally suggests that follow-up contacts may reduce repeat suicide attempts and prevent death by suicide for patients discharged from inpatient or emergency departments.76,79,80”

    From Evidence-based youth suicide prevention and intervention in pediatric primary care settings. (2024) · cites this paper as [79]

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 68 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Luxton, D. D., June, J. D., & Comtois, K. A.
Affiliations
  • United States Department of Defense (US)
  • University of Washington (US)
ORCID
Venue
Crisis
Publisher
Hogrefe Publishing Group
Published
2013-01-01
Volume
34
Issue
1
Pages
32-41
ISSN
  • 0227-5910 (ISSN-L)
  • 2151-2396
DOI
10.1027/0227-5910/a000158
OpenAlex
W1898056456
Semantic Scholar
1daa7ff43a495144b03afe64c8ce754f8bedc63f
Cited by
218
References
68
Citations by year
2026: 6 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 4
FWCI
11.95
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Crisis (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Suicide and Self-Harm Studies
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychiatric care and mental health services
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse
Keywords
suicide prevention, follow-up contact, suicide attempts, suicidal ideation, post-discharge care, emergency department discharge, telephone follow-up, suicide risk
MeSH terms
Suicide Prevention, Humans, Patient Discharge, Social Support, Suicide, Attempted, Correspondence as Topic

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review