Gastric Bypass Surgery Tripled the Suicide Rate

In this article, the bariatric surgery markedly decreased overall mortality, especially from cardiac and cancer causes. Suicide increased in the surgery group by three fold (0.9/10,000 person-year in the control group of 7925 people, vs 2.6 in the matched surgery group of 7925). The rate of the control group would be average for the general population, with 1% of people dying, and 1% of the mortality being by suicide. The implication is that weight loss tripled the suicide rate.

In the prior article on the mortality results in a Swedish sample, suicide was not addressed specifically. There were fewer non-cardiac, non-cancer deaths in the surgery group.

The finding of excess suicide should be confirmed in other studies.