The 10-years REPEATERS Cohort of French Adolescents

Local clinical practice :

After an SA, adolescents receive treatment in the Children's Hospital or in the center of psychiatric consultation (few go to a private care clinic). All centers of psychiatric consultation belong to the same hospital center, which uses a unique medical record. According to the local clinical practice, patients and their parents systematically meet the child and adolescent psychiatric-department social worker at the time of the SA. The social worker informs the family that they will be called after 1 year to determine whether patients are safe or whether they need to resume care. For this call, the social worker uses the phone number listed in the medical record or finds the phone number in the national phone directory. If the social worker fails to contact the patient, the patient is considered LCE.

Patient follow-up :

Ten years after the index SA (every other year from 2004 to 2010), a self-reporting questionnaire will be sent to all adolescent suicide attempters and their parents, with a letter explaining the research. If the address of the patient is not available, the hospital records department will be contacted to collect these data for patients who will be re-hospitalized during the study period. When adolescent suicide attempters will be not contacted and when no information will be found in hospital records, the French Civil status Office will be called to determine whether patients were still alive. When no further information will be obtained, the adolescent will be considered lost to follow-up (LF) at the time of the last information from 1 to 10 years after the index SA.

Data collection :

At the time of the index SA, personal and family data will be collected from medical records for adolescents: personal characteristics (sex, age, history of SA [yes/no], psychiatric comorbidities of the SA [yes/no] according to the International Classification of Disease 10 (WHO, 1993), school difficulties [yes/no], and family characteristics (marital relationship of parents [separated or not], professional status of each parent [working or not], family history of SA [yes/no], and alcoholic dependence of parents [yes/no]). After the index SA, data on duration of hospitalization, psychiatric follow-up [yes/no], recurrence of SA in the year following the index SA (early SA recurrence [yes/no]), and LCE status [yes/no]) will be collected. Ten years after the index SA, a self-reporting questionnaire will be sent to the patient to assess SA recurrence.