Investigating the Long-term Risks of Suicide in Young People With Both Mental and Physical Health Disorders

Principal investigator: Dr. Massimiliano Orri

Location: Canada

Funding Period: 2023-2025

People with serious mental illnesses pass away, on average, 15-20 years earlier than the general population. Yet, little attention has been paid to young people with both mental and physical health comorbidities or their long-term outcomes.

As 75% of mental health conditions develop before adulthood, the simultaneous presence of mental and physical illnesses may have a devastating long-term impact on young people’s health, development, and social adaptation, in turn contributing to premature mortality.

The project

Existing evidence in the field of young people with comorbidities of physical and mental illnesses, and their long-term outcomes, is limited. This project aims to address this by using large population-level data to investigate the risks of suicide and other forms of early mortality that are associated with comorbid mental and physical health problems in young people.

The process

The project will use administrative data from the whole population living in Denmark between 1980 and 2021. First, the project will estimate the risk of suicide or early mortality in young people who have a diagnosis of both a physical and mental health disorder, and compare it to that of young people without these comorbid diagnoses, as well as with those of young people with only physical or only mental health problems.

The project will also calculate, based on population life expectancy, the number of years lost on average by people with comorbidities of both a physical and mental health problem.

Lastly the project will use data modelling to understand why young people with both physical and mental health problems are at a higher risk of suicide or other form of early mortality than their peers.

The potential

This project will help health professionals to better support young people living with both physical and mental health problems by improving the way they assess patients’ needs.

It could also help policy makers to better understand the support required by young people who are living with health problems.

The outcome

Massimilliano and his team have shown that chronic pain may contribute to increasing the risk of suicide.
Whilst this association has been long suspected, this MQ funded study is the first to use large genetic and other data sets to find that chronic pain does play a significant role in increasing symptoms of depression and suicidal behaviour.

Papers published:

Orri et al, 2024: Association of chronic pain with suicide attempt and death by suicide: a two-sample Mendelian randomization. Journal of Molecular Psychiatry

Dr. Massimiliano Orri

Dr Massimilliano Orri is a Clinical Psychologist and Assistant professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Massimilliano’s research agenda focuses on understanding how early-life factors (including perinatal, childhood and adolescence factors), contribute to increasing suicide risk in the lifespan. His research adopts a population and biopsychosocial approach and is informed by disciplines such as developmental psychopathology, behavioral genetics, and psychiatric epidemiology.

“I dedicated my research and clinical practice to understanding what makes people at risk for suicide. Suicide is a tragic event, but it is preventable. I strongly believe on the importance of rigorous research to inform practice, empowering people, and change society as key tools to prevent suicide.”