A suicide is a deliberate act of self-harm taken with the expectation that it will be fatal. Suicide remains a significant public health problem worldwide. It not only burdens the people related personally, but financially, emotionally leaving a permanent scar psychologically. Suicide is a personal tragedy that prematurely takes the life of an individual leaving a social and psychological stigma on the family, friends and communities. About 9,00,000 people die of suicide worldwide every year

more »

... ording to WHO. Of these, 1,70,000 are residents of India. 1 Between 1987-2007, the suicide rate has increased from 7.9 to 10.3 per 1,00,000 with higher suicide rates in southern and eastern states of India. 2 According to Government of India, suicide deaths are as high as 1,35,000 in the year 2010. 3 The WHO has estimated that approximately one suicide occurs every minute and one suicide attempt approximately every 3 seconds (WHO-figures and facts about suicide 1999). The majority of suicides in India are by those below the age of 30 years. The fact that 71% of suicides in India are by persons below the age of 44 years imposes a huge social, economical and emotional burden on our society. The near equal suicide rates of young men and women and consistently narrow male to female ratio of 1.4:1 denotes that Indian women die more. 2 Suicide cases contribute to a major proportion of case load on intensive care units; about 55-60% of burden in ICU. The objective of our study was to compile the data obtained from all the cases of suicide for demographic factors like age, marital status, mode of suicide, etc. METHODOLOGY: After the ethical committee clearance, the data has been collected from the hospital records. All the 452 cases of suicide which were admitted to the ICU were analyzed retrospectively. Demographic variables like age, sex, marital status, mode of suicide, history of previous psychiatric history and cause of death were tabulated and analyzed. The descriptive statistics obtained were analyzed by statistical software 9.2. RESULTS: The study recruited 452 patients of which 53% were male. The following table shows gender wise distribution of patients.