Abstract

CHAVES MORENO, Allan; MADRIGAL RAMIREZ, Édgar; VARGAS SANABRIA, Maikel  and  ABARCA VILLALOBOS, Zarela. El suicidio en Costa Rica en el año 2005. Med. leg. Costa Rica [online]. 2008, vol.25, n.1, pp.17-35. ISSN 2215-5287.

Historically, suicide rate in Costa Rica has been under 10 by 100000 people. This rate is lower than other countries, but now, there are a lot of conditions in costarican population: social factors like poorness, unemployment and drug dependence; and psycological factors like depression and other emotional diseases. This conditions are increasing in the last years and suicide rate could also increases. In this paper we present an actuallized analysis about this phenomenon in Costa Rica. We analyzed 309 suicide deaths in 2005. We obtain a profile of this people: they were predominantly of masculin gender, in productive ages, married and singles, that died predominantly in monday, in march, july and october and in the province of Cartago. Also, the main mechanism utilized was death by hanging.

Keywords : Suicide in Costa Rica; violent death; forensic pathology; death by hanging; alcoholism; drug dependence.

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