Suicide in young people: risk factors and quantitaive space-time analysis

Abstract

Suicide is today a huge public health problem (OMS, 2000). It is the second leading cause of death among young people in Italy, France and the United Kingdom and the third in the United States. The aim of this paper was to develop a comparative study of mortality from suicide in adolescents living in the five regions of Brazil during the period 1991-2001, and to review the risk factors (RF) described in the literature. Methodology: this is an epidemiological study focusing on juvenile mental health using the data of the Mortality Information System of the Ministry of Health. The review of the literature was performed using the data- bases Lilacs and Medline as well as books dealing with the issue. The discussion is based on Edgar Morin’s concept of “complexity” in a contextualized form. Results: 69.811 deaths from suicide were registered during the period under study, 6.985 from these in the group of adolescents. The highest mortality coefficients/100 thousand inhabitants occurred in the south of the country (1992 to 1994; 1996 to 1998; 2001), followed by the centralwest. The principal risk factors described in the literature were history of previous attempts, suicidal ideas, ill treatment, precarious socio-economic conditions, severe chronic disease, impulsivity, depression and schizophrenia. Suicide reflects characteristics and relevant values of a society. It represents a complex system that should always be analyzed in the context of the individual, the society and the community. The acting of the primary health care professional in the sense of identifying the risk factors in the individual, familiar and community context is fundamental in the prevention of suicide.