PSYCHOLOGICAL AUTOPSY OF SUICIDE COMPLETERS IN LORESTAN PROVINCE: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Psychological autopsy is a direct method to investigate the risk factors for suicide and to reconstruct the events leading to death in suicide completers in order to come up with a profile of suicide completers and find ways to deal with it. The present study was conducted on the psychological autopsy of suicide completers in order to investigate the risk factors for suicide among Lorestan societies. This cross-sectional study included all suicide completers (N=34) referred to Shohada Ashayer hospital in Khorramabad over a six months period. The census sampling was applied, and the data collection tools were hospital records, psychological interview, and a self-generated questionnaire on economic and cultural status; method, time, and place of suicide; a history of congenital malformations in childhood, previous suicide attempts, psychosomatic illness, receiving psychiatric and counseling services and dependence on drugs; familial information and smoking. Finally, the collected data were analyzed using the SPSS software via the descriptive statistics, non-parametric tests such as the chi-square test, and normal distributions. In this study, the incidence of suicide was equal in the males and females, and the suicide completers were mostly in the age range of 21-30 years old (64.7%). The most common method of suicide was poisoning (drugs, aluminum phosphide drugs, and opioids), and the most important risk factors were psychological disorders, addiction, and substance dependence. In our study, 29 cases (85.3%) of all subjects were estimated to fit a diagnosis of a mental disorder at the time of the death. Psychological autopsy is a very important tool in assessing the cause of suicide. More studies with larger sample sizes are required in this field to examine the problem of suicide.