Insomnia and suicidal behaviour in prisoners

Insomnia has been associated with suicidality. Prisoners have an increased risk of both insomnia and suicidal behaviour. Therefore, it was decided to examine for a relationship between insomnia and suicidal behaviour in a large group of 1420 prisoners. Prisoners had a semi-structured psychiatric interview, which included the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS), and completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Spielberg Anger Expression Inventory and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. It was found that 568 (61.2%) of the prisoners scored in the insomnia cluster of the HDRS and that 183 (12.8%) had attempted suicide. Regression analyses showed that insomnia was significantly and independently associated with a lifetime history of attempting suicide. Insomnia was also significantly related to actual suicidality. After controlling for confounders, axis 1 psychiatric disorder, childhood trauma, neuroticism, low resilience, and anger were significantly associated with insomnia in male prisoners. These data suggest the possibility of a relationship between insomnia and suicidality in prisoners. Assessing insomnia may be helpful when evaluating the risk of suicidality in prisoners. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.