Poisoning resulting in death by suicide in Golestan Province in 2010-2016

Poisoning is one of the most common causes of death in the world. Poisoning resulting in death by suicide is one of the main public health challenges in the world. The present study was conducted to survey cases of poisoning resulting in death by suicide in Golestan Province.. This cross-sectional study was carried out on all medical records of referential bodies to Golestan department of forensic medicine that were died due to poisoning by suicide from March 2010 to March 2016. Data were obtained by checklist from medical records and SPSS software (ver. 16) and Chi-squared test were used for data analysis.   Of the 420 deaths due to poisoning, 171 deaths (40.7%) were due to suicide attempt. Of these 171 cases, 61.4% (n=105) were male and 42.1% (n=72) were aged 20-29 years. The mean age of the study population was 29.53±11.27 years and their minimum and maximum age was 14 years and 76 years. A total of 48% (n=82) of the cases were single and 42.1% (n=72) had only high school education. Moreover, 80.1% of the cases (n=137) lived in urban areas. Pesticides were the most common poisoning agents (n=131, 76.6%), with aluminum phosphide being the most frequent (n=104, 79.4%). Drugs were the second most common cause of death in this study. Pesticides, particularly aluminum phosphide, were the most common cause of poisoning resulting in death by suicide in Golestan Province and were observed mostly in young men. It is therefore crucial to restrict the easy access to these common agents of suicide, i.e. pesticides.