Suicide is defined as an act of intentionally causing one’s own death. Suicide is an intentional act and ‘suicide attempt’ is an intentional self-harm in which a person tries to kill himself but survives the attempt. The term ‘parasuicide’ was first coined by Norman Krietman in Edinburgh. Parasuicide, also labelled as deliberate self-harm is a major risk factor for completed suicide. Parasuicides and failed attempted suicides should be dealt responsibly as they sometimes leave a residual temporary or permanent disability and may also act as a primary event prior to the execution of a fatal suicidal attempt. Available literature is flooded with research on suicidal fatalities with a relative paucity of studies on non-fatal attempted suicides which lead the way to the initiation of this study to evaluate the medico-legal profile of suicide attempters admitted to SMS Hospital, Jaipur during the study period. The participants were interviewed using a proforma. Results were obtained using relevant statistical techniques. Majority of the suicide attempters in the present study were young adult married males, being the most active and productive population of society. Young unemployed and earning middle aged persons were the major sub groups of the suicide attempters. The most commonly employed methods for attempting suicide was poisoning (81.5%) followed by hanging (11.2%). Gender is significantly related to the method used for suicide attempts (p<0.5). Family problems were the main reason behind the attempted suicide in the present study (53.5%) followed by miscellaneous reasons (20.4%) and financial issues (13.8%). Investigation of the risk factors and medico-legal aspects of intentional and non-intentional acts of self-harm is immensely useful for prevention of such events, their repetitions and also completed suicides.
Impact Factor
2022: 6.012
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