Cette étude décrit l’évolution du taux de tentatives de suicide chez des patients avec schizophrénie avant, puis douze mois après qu’un de leur proche ait bénéficié du programme de psychoéducation à destination des familles Profamille.

Étude rétrospective sur 1209 participants ayant participé au programme Profamille version V3.2 sur 40 centres français, belges et suisses. La présence de tentatives de suicide chez les patients a été évaluée par un auto-questionnaire renseigné par le proche participant à Profamille. Une évaluation T0 explore les 12 mois précédant le début du programme, l’évaluation T1 explore les 12 mois suivant le programme.

Le taux de tentative de suicide est de 6,4 % avant Profamille, de 2,4 % 12 mois après la fin du programme. On observe une réduction significative du taux de tentatives de suicide au cours des 12 mois (p=0,0003) suivant Profamille.

Cette étude montre l’impact favorable de Profamille dans la réduction du taux de tentatives de suicide chez les patients avec schizophrénie. Dans la perspective d’une réduction des tentatives de suicide, nos résultats suggèrent l’intérêt de proposer Profamille précocement, lorsque le risque est le plus important.

Although mortality by suicide in schizophrenia seems to have decreased in some countries over the last 30 years, it remains much higher than in the general population. Studies have shown this risk to impact around 5% of patients, corresponding to a risk almost 2.5 times higher than in the general population. Family psychoeducation in schizophrenia has been demonstrated to lead to symptom reductions and to an improvement of the quality of life, two factors that should contribute to decreasing the suicidal risk. Therefore, if families attend an efficient psychoeducation program, we can expect a decrease in the patient suicidal risk. Attending a family psychoeducation program at the beginning of the disease would also be associated with a stronger preventive effect on suicidal mortality. The objective of this study is to describe the suicide attempt rate of patients who suffer from schizophrenia before and one year after one of their relatives participated to the family psychoeducation program Profamille.

We performed a retrospective study on 1209 people who attended the Profamille (V3.2 version) Family Psychoeducation Program. This program has 2 modules: an initial training module of 14 weekly or fortnightly sessions, and a consolidation module of 4 sessions over 2 years. Sessions last 4 hours and follow a precise and structured course. Data were collected from 40 different centers in France, Belgium and Switzerland and were based on participants assessed at the beginning and one year after the first module. Self-assessment from the relatives participating in the program provided the measure of patients’ suicide attempts. An assessment at T0 explored the attempts over the 12 months before the beginning of the program while the assessment at T1 analyzed those during the 12 months following the end of the Program. The Chi² test was used to compare the suicide attempt rates for each period, using a significance threshold of 0.05. Since the risk of suicide is greater in the first years of the illness, rates of attempts are also calculated according to the age of disorder. The analysis was carried out with the statistical software R.

The number of participants reporting that their relative had attempted suicide in the previous 12 months decreased from 41 to 21. The annual attempts rate was evaluated at 6.4 % before the Profamille program and decreased to 2.4 % a year after the end of the program (P=0.0003). The reduction of the attempt rate was observed even for patients with schizophrenia for more than 10 years.

This study shows the positive impact of Profamille on reducing the rate of suicide attempts in patients with schizophrenia. It has been shown that the risk is highest at the beginning of the disorder. Therefore, based on our results, it would seem appropriate to propose the Profamille program at an early stage.