ANÁLISIS DE MUERTES POR SUICIDIO
EN EL ESTADO DE QUERÉTARO
Leopoldo Francisco Espinosa Feregrino*, Luis Guillermo Almeida Montes, Francisco Cortés S*,
Guillermo Enrique Leo Amador
Servicio Médico Forense Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado de Querétaro. Departamento de Investigación. Centro Comunitario de Salud Mental. Servicios de Salud del Estado de Querétaro.*Departamento de Informática y Estadística, Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría Ramón de La Fuente.
Coordinación del Doctorado en Fac. de Medicina, Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro. Ciencias de la Salud.
Correspondencia: Dr. Luis Guillermo Almeida Montes. Ocampo 19 Sur, Centro Histórico 76030, Querétaro, Qro. TEL. 01 422-214-0639, fax: 01
422-224-2487, e-mail: [email protected] primera versión: 16 de mayo de 2002. Recibido segunda versión: 13 de septiembre de 2002. Recibido tercera versión: 28 de mayo de
Aceptado: 5 de septiembre de 2003. SUMMARY
Suicidal behavior is a complex event. Neurobiological,
psychological and sociodemographic factors are involved. Suicide
is a health problem which accounts for 0.9% of all worldwide
deaths.
InMexico, the suicide mortality rate in males was 5.9 x 100,000
inhabitants in 2000, and was the 17th cause of death among
males in the same year.
In the USA, the death rate due to suicide has remained stable
for last 15 years. In contrast, in México this phenomenon has
increased.
In 1970 the rate death by suicide was 1.01 per 100,000
inhabitants and in 2000 increased to 5.9. InMexico, there are
many different report sources related to suicide incidence, but
unfortunately the information is incongruous. Recent research
shows that some of these report sources are not reliable.
Additionally, there is no information about sociodemographic
factors such as age, gender, or place of residence linked to suicide
behavior.
According to Mexican laws, all death bysuicide requires an
autopsy to be practiced. For this reason, we consider the registration
at the SEMEFO (Medical Forensic Services)of the state of
Queretaro, to be optimum for this analysis.
The objective of the present study is to know the suicide rate
in population older than 10 years in the state of Queretaro, Mexico,
during the last seven years and, in addition, to find outsome
factors related to death by suicide.
We computed the rate of suicide in subjects older than 10
years from 1996 to 2002. Additionally, a retrospective analysis
was made from the data base which included social and
demographic information such as age, gender, place of residence,
hour and month of death from the diseases registered at the
SEMEFO in Queretaro from January1999 to December 2001.
A descriptive statistic was made of the suicide deaths and
other different causes. A logistic regression and structural analysis
model was applied to identify the social and demographic variables
associated with the suicide behavior.
The retrospective cohort was integrated for the deaths registered
at SEMEFO from 1996 to 2003 in Queretaro, which contains alldeaths that required a forensic intervention in the state. This
included the information reported by the four SEMEFO ubicated
in the state: Queretaro, Cadereyta, San Juan del Río, and Jalpan
counties.
The death cause was determinated in the following way: once
authorities were informed about the ocurrence of a death, a team
conformed by a forensic medical doctor, photographer,criminalistic expert, chemist expert, and dactiloscopist expert,
collected the evidences and the body was transfered to the
correspondig SEMEFO in order to practice the autopsy.
All the information was reported to the police in order to
proceed with the death cause investigation. Together with the
authorities, the police and the SEMEFO defined if the death was
secondary to…
