• Find people
• Intranet

News

20/10/2026 - Press release

One in five people who attempt suicide make another attempt within a year of the first

A 20% of people admitted to hospital following a suicide attempt will make another attempt within the first twelve months, according to the results of the SURVIVE project (Suicide Prevention and Intervention Study), published in The Lancet Regional Health - Europe. This is the largest study on the subject to date based on a prospective cohort, meaning that the data were collected prospectively rather than extracted from medical records. It involved 1,730 participants from eight public hospitals across five Spanish autonomous communities.

The risk of a repeat suicide attempt is particularly high during the first three months following the attempt that led to hospital admission. The main risk factors identified in the study include a high burden of psychotropic medication, with four or five prescribed drugs, a history of non-suicidal self-injury, and a higher frequency of suicidal ideation. Other factors include having experienced moderate to severe emotional neglect during childhood and a higher number of previous suicide attempts. In this regard, people with one to three previous attempts had a significantly higher risk, which increased further among those with four or more previous attempts.

In light of these findings, the study's principal investigator, Dr Víctor Pérez, a psychiatrist at Hospital del Mar and researcher at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute (HMRIB) and the Mental Health area of CIBER (CIBERSAM), calls for "strengthening mental healthcare following hospital discharge after a suicide attempt and maintaining it for at least the first year afterwards".

Víctor Pérez

Intensive follow-up after a first suicide attempt

One of the strengths of SURVIVE is that the clinical profile of the people included in the study was assessed through clinical evaluations within a maximum of 15 days after the suicide attempt. This provided a clear picture of the factors that had led the patient to this decision. Participants underwent a clinical assessment of their condition, and their hospital admissions were monitored over the following twelve months. Of the 1,730 people who participated in the study, 73% were women and the mean age was 36.5 years.

These findings lead the researchers to suggest that the results should be taken into account when planning healthcare for this population. "A healthcare structure must be established that allows us to better identify the factors leading to repeat suicide attempts while also providing intensive and close monitoring of patients who attend hospital emergency departments because of suicidal behaviour, given their increased risk of another suicide attempt and, consequently, of death by suicide", explains Dr Pérez. The researchers also call for strengthening and optimising the portfolio of healthcare services available in these cases in order to provide an appropriate therapeutic response to patients' risk profiles.

Every year, nearly 700,000 deaths by suicide are recorded worldwide, with a high risk of recurrence following a first attempt. To address this issue, the SURVIVE project continues to analyse the evolution of the study cohort to assess participants' risk profiles after five years. "Within the SURVIVE project, we are also testing interventions to reduce the risk of another suicide attempt and prevent a new episode from occurring. We are also incorporating parallel projects that expand our knowledge of the neurobiological basis of suicidal behaviour through genetic and environmental analyses (the smarTOMICs project), and introducing new markers for the study of suicidal behaviour, such as those derived from natural language analysis using AI tools (the ALENTAR-J-CM project)", adds Alejandro de la Torre Luque, a researcher at the Department of Legal Medicine, Psychiatry and Pathology at the Complutense University of Madrid and CIBERSAM, and also an author of the study.

The study also involved Hospital del Mar, Hospital Clínic Barcelona and Consorci Corporació Sanitària Parc Taulí in Catalonia; Complutense University of Madrid, Hospital Universitario La Paz and Hospital Clínico San Carlos in Madrid; Hospital Virgen del Rocío in Andalusia; Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias; and Hospital Universitario Araba in the Basque Country.

Reference article

Pérez V, Elices M, Schmidt C, Andreo-Jover J, Ayad-Ahmed W, Bobes-Bascarán T, Canosa-García I, Cebria AI, González-Pinto A, García-Fernandez A, Gómez-Vallejo S, Fernández-Fernández J, Crespo-Facorro B, Diaz-Marsá M, Grande I, Jiménez-Treviño L, Lara E, Ayuso-Mateos JL, Palao DJ, Palao-Tarrero A, Roberto N, Ruiz-Veguilla M, Santos MV, de la Torre-Luque A; SURVIVE Consortium; Saiz PA. Predictors of suicide attempt recurrence after an index suicide attempt in Spain: a prospective multicentre cohort study. Lancet Reg Health Eur. 2026 Jul 30;68:101787. doi: 10.1016/j.lanepe.2026.101787. PMID: 42571370; PMCID: PMC13452172.

More news