Objective: To investigate whether notifying injecting drug users (IDU) of their positive HIV serostatus contributes to suicide and overdose mortality risk.
Design: Members of a cohort of IDU, recruited since December 1985, who first learned their HIV serostatus after study entry but before December 1992, were studied for incidence of deaths due to suicide and overdose.
Methods: Incidence of mortality due to suicide/overdose was calculated from date of first HIV test result disclosure until the end of follow-up or diagnosis of AIDS.
Results: Eighty-six HIV-positive and 252 HIV-negative IDU were included with median follow-up times of 4.3 and 4.0 years, respectively. Seven suicides and 10 deaths from overdose were recorded. High suicide/overdose risk shortly after test result notification was not found among HIV-positive IDU. Only one out of eight HIV-positive IDU who died of suicide/overdose died within 6 months of first disclosure. The overall suicide/overdose mortality rate was higher for HIV-positive than HIV-negative IDU; the rate ratio being 2.46 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.95-6.39] or 2.04 (95% CI, 0.77-5.39) after control for confounders.
Conclusions: Notifying IDU of their positive HIV serostatus does not appear to lead to a sudden and substantial rise in suicide/overdose deaths. Although death from suicide/overdose is more common among HIV-positive than HIV-negative IDU, this difference is likely to result from factors other than test result disclosure. Therefore, provided that appropriate counselling is offered, we see no reason to discourage voluntary HIV test result notification for fear of inducing suicide in HIV-infected IDU.