Epidemiological survey of the attempted suicide patients admitted at Hazrat Rasoul Hospital in Tehran 2007-2011

Suicide is one of the major problems in the modern world that calls for investigation in different periods. This study was an epidemiological survey of the attempted suicide patients admitted at Hazrat Rasoul Hospital in a five-year period in Tehran.
In this cross-sectional study, the data on the 483 attempted suicide cases in 2007-2011 were collected from Hazrat Rasoul Hospital files. The data were gathered with a structured checklist and analyzed with SPSS 16.
The results ranked the attempted suicide cases as 78.3% with no academic education, 72% below the range of 30 years of age, 64.8% unmarried, 51.3% men and 32.9% housewives. Moreover, 40.7% of the cases reported the history of mental illnesses with depression and schizophrenia at the highest rate of occurrence. Thirty-three percent of the suicides were attempted at nighttime, 69% on early weekdays, and 33.4% in winter. Family struggles with the rate of 48.9% and psychological disorders with the rate of 24.8% were the main causes of the suicide, respectively. Fifty-seven percent of the cases abused tablets and 29.4% cut their hand veins as the most common methods of suicide. Only 3% of the cases were reported dead.
Young, unmarried people, people with the history of psychological disorders and unsuccessful suicide attempts are at the higher risk of attempting suicide who demand more preventive observation.