El Suicidio Conceptos Actuales

Salud Mental
ISSN: 0185-3325
perezrh@imp.edu.mx
Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría Ramón de la
Fuente Muñiz
México

Gutiérrez García, Ana G.; Contreras, Carlos M.; Orozco Rodríguez, Rosselli Chantal
El suicidio, conceptos actuales
Salud Mental, vol. 29, núm. 5, septiembre-octubre, 2006, pp. 66-74
Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría Ramón de la Fuente Muñiz
Distrito Federal, México

Disponible en:http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=58229510

Cómo citar el artículo
Número completo
Más información del artículo
Página de la revista en redalyc.org

Sistema de Información Científica
Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal
Proyecto académico sin fines de lucro, desarrollado bajo la iniciativa de acceso abierto

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 deathin 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 frequently than females,
in a proportion of 5:1. Consummate suicide occurs in men about
50 years old, mainly by hanging or fire arms. Females between20
and 29 years old, on the contrary, carry out more frequent unsuccessful attempts in the same proportion, by using pesticides and
medical drugs. However, in recent years an increase in the number
of suicides among young people from 15 to 24 years old has been
observed, commonly in low-income sectors, in subjects with a
previous history of psychiatric disorders, mainly personality disorders,abuse of substances and prior suicidal attempts. The risk
of suicide generally increases after 45, and becomes especially
serious in older people. The phenomenon of suicide in the elderly
deserves special attention, due to the fact that the population
over 65 years old is continuously increasing. This group displays
fewer attempts than youths, but they achieve their aim more
often through a silentsuicide, by refusing to eat or to accept and
follow medical prescriptions.
Some psychiatric disturbances are intimately related to suicide.
It is considered that 50% or more of the consummate suicides are
performed by people suffering from an affective disorder, mainly
depression. In this sense, it is noteworthy that most of these
patients had been misdiagnosed and in many cases had not received anyproper treatment. 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 committingsuicide 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 phar-

macological treatment of depression and anxiety, including hospitalization, if it were the case.
The riskfactors 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...