Suicide is the second cause of death in the ages 15-19 in Europe. Hungary led the suicide statistics before the political changes and we are still the second in the European Union, but it is luckily not the situation among Hungarian children and adolescents. In spite of this, adolescent suicide is a big mental health problem in Hungary as well. To illustrate it we would like to present our data on suicidal behaviour of Hungarian children/adolescents, who were admitted for the first time in their life to a child psychiatric department.

Using a structured diagnostic interview the authors examined 221 children/adolescents, aged 11-18, who were admitted for the first time to the Vadaskert Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Hospital, Budapest.

More than one-third, exactly 36.7% (n = 81) of the hospitalized children/adolescents had suicidal behaviour. The most common co-occurring conditions among suicidal children under 14 were attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (n = 19; 59.4%), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) (n=15; 46.9%) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) (n = 14; 43.8%), while above age 15 it was ODD, dysthimia and GAD (in all cases: n = 21; 42.9%).

The striking finding was the extremely high prevalence of suicidal behavior among children/adolescents aged 11-18, who were at the first time in their life admitted to a psychiatric department. Both externalization and internalization disorders should be carefully screened in suicide prevention among children and adolescents.