Patterns of Suicide in Kuwait: a retrospective descriptive study from 2003–2009

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Salah Al-Waheeb¹  Nadia Al-Kandary² 

[1] Faculty of Medicine, Kuwait University, 72, 71661, Shamiyah, Kuwait;General Department of Criminal Evidence, Ministry of Interior, Farwaniyah, Kuwait;

关键词: Suicide Rate;    Suicide Victim;    Middle Eastern Country;    High Suicide Rate;    Suicide Case;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-015-1862-7

 received in 2015-03-22, accepted in 2015-05-21,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPrior to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990, suicides were almost unheard of in Kuwait. However, there has been a notable increase in the referrals of suicide cases to the forensic authorities since then. A review of suicide cases was performed to investigate the demographics of this phenomenon and the suicide modalities used and to uncover issues that can be addressed by the region's government.MethodsThe sole source of data was the general department of criminal evidence (GDCE), where cases are referred by police authorities and by hospital investigators from the entire country. All cases signed out by forensic investigators as “suicide” during the time period 2003–2009 were retrieved. A full review of the data from the case files was made. This included demographic data, scene examination, radiographic investigations, autopsies with histo-pathological examination findings and toxicological screening results in each case.ResultsA total of 347 cases were retrieved and studied. Hanging was found to be the most common suicide modality used by subjects (60 %). Non-citizens constituted 87 % of cases, and no significant difference was found between married and single subjects or between Muslims and non-Muslims. Regions that were more populated with an expatriate labour force had the highest suicide prevalence.ConclusionThe government of Kuwait needs to investigate the dire conditions in which some expatriates live and to improve their situation. More control over the dispensing of certain medications needs to be enforced. Finally, strict firearm control could help reduce the suicide rates in Kuwait.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Al-waheeb and Al-Kandary. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.