Psychosis patients with fewer symptoms who have a clearer idea of their illness than other, apparently worse-affected, patients are more likely to think about suicide, a university study has shown.
Patients who took medicine on time and came for follow-up consultations regularly might not be as stable as doctors thought, University of Hong Kong psychiatry professor Eric Chen Yu-hai said.
A research team led by Chen compared 89 psychosis patients with 71 people who had no psychosis between 2005 and 2010.
The subjects were all aged 15 to 25, the most common age range when psychosis first strikes.
The researchers found that while 15 of the non-psychotic participants (about 21 per cent) had had thoughts about suicide in the previous seven days, the proportion of psychosis patients who had was nearly double - 37, or about 41 per cent.
A comparison of the 37 psychosis patients who had suicidal thoughts and the 52 who did not showed that the former had fewer symptoms, such as hallucinations, lack of motivation and lack of facial expression.
