Aims: The study was to investigate the emotional status, suicidal inclination, severity of distress symptom, and quality of the life in COPD and lung cancer inpatient.

Methods: The study design was cross-sectional. The self-reported research tools included Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS-D), Multi-Attitude-Suicide-Tendency-Repulsion by life (MAST-R), and SF-36. The suicidal-risk scale was assessed by nurses.

Results: A total of 186 inpatients (78 COPD and 108 Lung-Cancer) participated in this study. There were 63 (33.9%) inpatients (30 COPD and 33 Lung-cancer) with borderline or clinical depression as measured by HADS-D. Patients’ suicide-tendency mean score was 2.6 with total score of five (2.7 COPD and 2.5 Lung-cancer) measured by MAST-R. There were 39 (21.0%) inpatients (22 COPD and 17 Lung-cancer) with moderate or high suicidal-risk assessed by nurses using the suicidal-risk scale. For the physical status and quality-of-life, we found the mean number of distress symptoms was 8.3 and the mean score of SF-36 was 51.1 with total score of 100. Correlation showed that the more symptom number patients had, the more depressive status patients had. We also found negative correlation between depression status and quality-of-life and positive correlation between depression and suicidal-tendency (r = -.631 and .395). The study also showed positive correlation between suicidal-risk assessed by nurses and patients’ self-reported suicide-tendency.

Conclusion: The high risk of suicide among inpatients with COPD and Lung Cancer was one of the most stressful events for clinical nurses. Nurses accurately detected the suicidal-risk inpatients as showed in this study might pave the way to help nurse design strategies to mediate inpatients’ suicide-tendency.