medigraphic

Artemisa en línea

EL SUICIDIO,

CONCEPTOS ACTUALES

Ana G. Gutiérrez-García1,2, Carlos M. Contreras2,3, Rosselli Chantal Orozco-Rodríguez2

SUMMARY
One current problem in Public Health relates to suicide and the identification of the risk factors needs to be clarified accurately. The bases of suicide involve complex multiple factors. In a high proportion of nations, mainly in industry-developing countries, suicide is placed among the first three causes of death in groups aged from 15 to 34 years. In Mexico, suicide represents the ninth cause of mortality, within a wide scale of age ranging from 15 to 64 years. Some risk factors have been identified. Epidemiological studies show that males commit suicide more …ver más…

In addition, the abuse of or dependence on alcohol is present in about 20% of consummate suicides, and high rates of suicide are also observed in schizophrenia. Another common disturbance associated with suicide is anxiety. The simultaneous presence of anxiety and depression must be considered as a great risk factor, since the depressed patient has a high risk of committing suicide under phases of increased anxiety. All of these observations imply an alert signal for medical care units concerning the importance of detecting signs of the presence of risk factors and suicidal ideation, and of implementing adequate therapeutic management, namely, a supervised phar1 2

macological treatment of depression and anxiety, including hospitalization, if it were the case. The risk factors in potential suicide include isolation, poor health, depression, alcoholism, lowered self-esteem, despair and feelings of social and family refusal. Frequently, the potential suicide directly or indirectly gives behavioral and verbal cues of his or her suicidal intention. Roughly, 60% of the victims of suicide had attended some medical care unit in the month previous to the suicide and had commented something about their desires and feelings about death at some moment, and 30% had clearly revealed their suicidal ideation. For such reason, the evaluation of risk of the potentially suicidal patient should be a common practice in medical care units. Therefore, the early detection of the