Age of first suicide attempt in men and women: an admixture analysis.

Objectives. To define different subgroups of suicide attempters according to age at onset of suicide attempts. Methods. Participants were 229 suicide attempters (147 females; 82 males) admitted to a general hospital in Madrid, Spain. We used admixture analysis to determine the best-fitting model for the age at onset of suicide attempts separated by sex. Results. The best fitted model for the age at onset of suicide attempts was a mixture of two gaussian distributions. Females showed an earlier age at onset of suicide attempts in both Gaussian distributions (mean perpendicular to S.D.) (26.98 perpendicular to 5.69 and 47.98 perpendicular to 14.13) than males (32.77 perpendicular to 8.11 and 61.31 perpendicular to 14.61). Early-onset female attempters were more likely to show borderline personality disorder than late-onset female attempters (OR = 11.11; 95% CI = 2.43-50.0). Conclusions. Age at onset of suicide attempts characterizes different subpopulations of suicide attempters.