Abstract

Introduction: Over the past 30 years, Beck’s Suicide Intent Scale (SIS) has been the prevailing psychometricscale for assessing suicide intent in suicide attempters. In recent studies showed a positive relationship between SIS scores. Since the proportion of older people in population is rising worldwide, indeed the increase in developing countries like India is even greater than the developed countries. Material & Methods: The present autopsy has been carried out in the Department of Forensic Medicine, Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, Bangalore. All the cases aged 60 years and above brought to the department for medico-legal autopsy with alleged history of suicide were selected. Detailed information regarding the deceased particulars including suicidal scale I as in, presumptive stressful life events as in and the circumstances of death were collected from the relatives and police. Results: Previous suicidal attempt was present in 11% of the victims. Most had history of bad physical health prior to death in suicide victims. 68% had Family h/o suicide in elderly suicides. 21% of victims had CVS disorder, 12% diabetes. 80% of victims had low suicide intention. Total number of stressful life events experienced by study population was very high- 5.29±1.05 and 5.05±1.04 for males and females respectively. The mean stressful life event score for life time in study population was also high- 357.37±62.62 and 365.53±86.46 in males and females respectively. Conclusions: Total number of stressful life events experienced by study population was very high -5.29±1.05 and 5.05±1.04 for males and females respectively. The meanstressful life event score for life time in study population was also high- 357.37±62.62 and 365.53±86.46 in males and females respectively.

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