Exploratory study about professional characteristics of suicide attempters

We aimed to describe the professional characteristics of suicide attempters. One investigator asked 87 consecutive patients, aged 18 to 25 years, who had been hospitalized in a university hospital in Angers after having attempted suicide anytime during a 6.5-month period (November 2008-April 2009) to complete a questionnaire about their working conditions. The working conditions of both sexes were approximatively the same. Many patients described situations where work organization was known to produce given mental disorders. Patients hospitalized for suicide attempts are in professions that leaves them more stressed than the general population of workers (Sumer, Samotrace etc.). This evidence could favour a link between attempted suicide and mental factors of strain at work. The results of this study should be interpreted with caution because of the phenomena of circuitous data and small sample size.