Caracterización de las víctimas de suicidio de las autopsias realizadas en el Servicio Médico Legal de Concepción el año 2010 Characterization of the suicide victims of autopsies performed during 2010 at Concepción's Forensics Medical Service

INTRODUCTION: Suicide is usually interpreted as the failure of a person to face adversity, in which there are many other factors involved. That’s why its analysis is complex and few studies on the subject exist. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to describe the profile of suicide victims for the autopsies in the Forensic Medical Service (FMS) of Concepcion during 2010. MATERIAL AND METHOD: This is a descriptive, retrospective and crosssectional study, with a non-probability sample of 64 consecutive autopsy reports of deaths by suicide, carried out in the FMS of Concepcion in 2010. The following variables were registered: gender, age, occupation, marital status, city of origin, previous attempts, previous letter and/or notice and morbid history. Data were tabulated in Microsoft Excel, later generating tables and graphs for segmental analysis. RESULTS: Of all autopsies performed in the FMS of Concepcion in 2010, 7.9% were suicides, of which 89.1% were male and 10.9% women. The average age was 41.35 years, mostly between 20-29 and 50-59 years, 50.8% were single and 33.3% married, 23.4% from Talcahuano and 15.6% from Concepcion, 60.9% had an occupation, 21.9% had warned of their intentions, 6.3% left a letter and 10.9% had previous attempts, 62.5% didn’t have a psychiatric history and 64.1% didn’t have history of medical illness. DISCUSSION: Compared to national statistics, the proportion by sex is similar, but there aren’t works that study suicides in detail and provide information about the other factors studied in this work.