Background: Psychiatric illness and suicide attempt are major risk factors of suicide.Earlier studies have explored the risk of subsequent suicide among suicide attempters, however no studies have examined predictors of suicide in a national cohort of psychiatric inpatients, who self-harmed in the year before hospital admission.Methods: This national prospective register-based study examined all psychiatric inpatients who had a recent suicide attempt.Patients admitted in the time period 1998-2006 were followed from date of psychiatric admission until death by suicide or until the end of year 2006.Survival analyses techniques were used to estimate predictors of suicide.Results: Our study population consisted of 17,257 patients; 520 (3%) committed suicide during follow-up and 19% of the suicides occurred during the index admission or within one month of discharge.A rate on 1645 suicides per 100,000 person-years in the first year after psychiatric admission was disclosed.Besides increasing age and being male, multivariable analyses showed that a higher degree of education, being employed, having had a suicide attempt in the week before psychiatric admission and contact to a private psychiatrist increased the risk of suicide.Conclusion: This study demonstrated that psychiatric patients with recent self-harm have high suicide rates, especially those who self-harmed in the month before admission.Further, a number of predictors of subsequent suicide were found which psychiatric health personnel could take into account when assessing suicidal risk among patients.