Antidepressant prescription data were available from 1995 to 2004, and recording of diagnosis for which antidepressant medication was prescribed began after the year 2000. Thus we ran analyses of the subcohort with no antidepressant medication prescriptions over that 10-year period as a sensitivity analysis in a sample enriched for those without affective disorders, e.g. depression diagnosed by a physician and treated. In a competing risk model in the subcohort of 22 584 persons alive on 1 January 1995 with smoking data and 76 suicides between 1995 and 2011, compared with never smokers, active smokers had a HR of 2.91 (95% CI 1.63–5.17) for suicide with no adjustments or exclusions other than age or sex. In this subcohort, 18 470 persons received no antidepressant prescriptions, 1676 received prescriptions for antidepressant medications for 3–9 months, and 2438 received prescriptions for antidepressant medications for more than 9 months. Among never users of antidepressants, there were 40 suicides, nine among never smokers, seven among former smokers, and 24 among active smokers (in 1975); among them, the risk of suicide was 2.50 (95% CI 1.15–5.42)
