EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDY OF ATTEMPTED SUICIDE IN JIROFT, KERMAN(AUTUMN 2001)

Attempted suicide mainly occurs in obstinate, disturbed and hostile individuals and in ones who can not easily communicate with others. It is committed with awareness and aimed to hurt oneself. Since health care centers should pay high expenses to treat the patients and also suicide is a big sin in Islamic culture thus, it was decided to analyze the characteristics of all consecutive referrals for suicide attempt to emergency department of Jiroft Hospital. This cross-sectional study was carried out to investigate the epidemiology of attempted suicide in all related referrals to Jiroft emergency department(2001). The studied population included all people who referred to emergency department after suicide during this study. The questionnaire provided in this study included questions about history of addiction and depression, demographic characteristics, method of attempted suicide and the most effective factors in suicide attempt. The collected data was analyzed by SPSS program and using Chi square test. Results of the study showed that from all cases, about 3% referred for being hurt by suicide. In 75% of the patients the route of suicide was drug poisoning, 20% poison and 5% cutting of vessels. The most important factor that influenced suicide was family problems(29%), sickness (29%), problems with spouse(18%) and economic problems(7%). About 36% of cases had a history of using depression drugs and 16% had a history of addiction to at least one of the opioids. Due to plenty of suicide attempts among young persons and since family problems are known to be the most effective factor in suicide therefore, authorities have to try hard to recognize vulnerable group and offer psychotherapy services to them.