Maternal suicide study provides insights into complicating factors for perinatal deaths

This article was written by Anna Courant, M.S.N.

Suicide is a leading cause of death during pregnancy and in the months after delivery in the United States, and many of these deaths could be preventable.

A mixed-methods study published in JAMA Network Open looks at the circumstances associated with perinatal suicide as well as how these circumstances vary across the perinatal period, using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Violent Death Reporting System data.

The authors, all from the University of Michigan, found that mental health conditions, substance use, and intimate partner problems represent important precipitating circumstances for perinatal suicide.

The study looked at data from more than 1,100 women who died while pregnant or within a year after giving birth, and whose deaths were either listed as suicides or as happening from undetermined causes. 

The researchers compared data these individuals with data from more than 17,600 women of the same age who had not been pregnant in the last year. 

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“We should do everything we can to prevent these suicides. We owe it to these women and their families,” said lead author Kara Zivin, Ph.D., who is the Marcia A. Valenstein, M.D. Collegiate Professor of Psychiatry and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the U-M Medical School.

“Our study highlights the need for policies and practices targeting mental health, substance use, and intimate partner problems as part of a strategic approach to reducing perinatal suicide risk.” 

Zivin co-authored this study with Briana Mezuk, Ph.D., a professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health at the U-M School of Public Health. 

Together, they serve as principal investigators of the Aging, Transitions over the Lifespan, and Suicide (ATLAS) Study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, which explores how major life transitions, including pregnancy, impact suicide risk. 

“This work suggests that pregnancy is a period of transition in people’s lives when preexisting factors that contribute to suicide risk can come together in various ways, in addition to social, psychological, and biological risk factors that are part of the perinatal period itself,” said Mezuk.