The proportion of drug addicts among completed suicides
The issues of suicidal mortality of drug users are discussed. Comparison of the indices of the contingent of persons registered by substance abuse treatment services and those having completed the suicide revealed 64 cases of suicide committed by drug addicts. Of these, 63 - men, 1 - woman (the ratio is sharply shifted - M:W - 63:1, which is significantly different from the general population). The most frequent (64.0%) drug addicts with completed suicides were in the age group of 36-45 years. The mean age of opiate users was 42.7±2.6 years, users of synthetic psychostimulants - 37.1±2.9 years, which is also significantly lower than the mean age of suicides in the general population. All identified cases of suicide belong to the so-called “hard” methods. While dominated by self-strangulation (87.5%), cuts were documented less frequently (9.4%). No cases of intentional overdose were identified. The proportion of drug addicts in the total number of suicides in the Tyumen Region was in different years (2014-2018) of the study period from 3.2 to 6.5%, an average of 4.6%. These figures were given in the introduced below in this paper literature. First of all, this was due to the absence of intentional drug overdoses among the documented suicides, the confirmation of which required not only a pathological-anatomical and laboratory examination, but also a postmortem psychological-psychiatric examination. The authors concluded that the data obtained allowed estimating the “lower level” of the proportion of drug addicts among the lethal contingent, as well as indicating the need to improve the system of postmortem diagnosis of suicides of substance users to obtain more reliable indices. One of the options for solving the problem was considered as necessary - a systematic approach, including the introduction of medical records and accounting for all forms of suicidal activity documented during the observation of the patient. On the one hand, this will make it possible, if necessary, to involve archival data for an expert decision on deliberate voluntary demise. On the other hand, it will give an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of measures for the prevention and correction of suicidal behavior in risk groups.