Comportamiento y distribución del suicidio en la ciudad de Medellín durante el periodo 2015-2019

Objective

To identify the distribution and behavior of suicide in the city of Medellin during the period 2015-2019.

Material and methods

Documentary study, retrospective approach, secondary sources of information on suicide cases reported by the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences between 2015-2019 for the city of Medellin were used, the data was consolidated and transformed into relative frequencies and percentages.

Results

A total of 839 cases of suicide were reported, 81% of which were men, with a higher occurrence in ages between 29 and 59 years, reaching 48% of the total cases. Unmarried people were the marital status with the highest number of cases, 60% in the last two years; asphyxia with 60% is the most used method and temporality only revealed statistically significant results with respect to the day of highest occurrence, being Sunday and Monday the most frequent with 17% respectively.

Conclusions

It was possible to establish the sociodemographic characteristics with the highest incidence of suicide, it was shown that having lower educational level increases the prevalence of suicide, the lack of support network explained the tendency of singles to commit the act, the most used causal mechanism was asphyxia followed by injuries by projectile from a firearm and poisoning.