Baird et al (2025)

In this observational study, we compared the sociodemographic, clinical and care characteristics of mental health patients who died by suicide in the UK between 2001 and 2021 and who had spent time in prison with mental health patients who died by suicide who had no prison history.

Over the 21-year study period, we found 33,381 people who died by suicide in the UK and had been in contact with mental health services in the 12 months before death (26% of all general population suicide deaths). Of these, 3,335 (11%) were ex-prisoners, an average of 159 suicide deaths per year. Most were male (2,988, 90%). Compared with other patients with no prison history, ex-prisoner patients had higher frequencies of personality disorder, schizophrenia and other primary psychotic disorders, as well as all types of childhood abuse. Ex-prisoner patients were also more likely to reside in the most deprived areas of the England, Scotland and Wales and to have a history of drug and/or alcohol misuse than patients with no prison history.

Our findings suggest that mental health services need to focus particularly on patients with a history of being in prison who are experiencing economic adversity and offer substance-use-related interventions to ensure continued patient engagement. Specialist teams should be established to help ease the transition from prison to the general population for recently released ex-prisoners and their families. Specialist teams should help them to get in touch with charities and local organisations who can support their wider health and wellbeing needs (such as housing, relationships, finances, employment, and drug and alcohol misuse), in additional to their mental health. The link with deprivation is striking at a time at which rising costs of living are resulting in more health inequalities.

Read the full paper:

• An examination of former prisoners’ mental health problems before death by suicide over a 21-year period (2001–2021) (BJPsych Open)

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