Fibromyalgia comes with a suicide risk: study

**Nate** · #1 07-19-2010, 11:19 AM

Fibromyalgia comes with a suicide risk: study

By Genevra Pittman
NEW YORK | Fri Jul 16, 2010 11:16am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - "When treating women with fibromyalgia, doctors should be on the lookout for depression and warning signs of suicide, according to a new study.
"People with fibromyalgia don't just have fibromyalgia," Dr. Lesley Arnold, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati who studies fibromyalgia but was not involved with the current research, told Reuters Health.
Danish researchers looking at death rates in women diagnosed with this chronic pain condition found that the risk of death from suicide was ten times higher than in the general population. They also found a higher-than-average risk of death for liver disease and strokes, but no difference in overall death rates.
Patients with fibromyalgia - about 2 percent of the U.S. population - suffer from widespread pain and have tender points that are painful to the touch. There is no cure for fibromyalgia, and pain medications often aren't very helpful, so patients can have pain that is bad enough to disrupt their everyday lives for years.
People with fibromyalgia also have higher rates of psychiatric illness than the general population, and about 90 percent of those with the condition are women..."

Click on the link for the full article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66F3JJ20100716

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