Intentional and Accidental Poisonings and Their Relation With Some Individual Characteristics of Patients

Poisoning in all forms, intentional and accidental, are one of the relatively common causes of medical emergencies. Nowadays because of increasing the number of poisons and toxic drugs a great degree of attention has been focused on poisoning and it has been considered as a speciality in medicine. The aim of the present study was investigation of the prevalance of each type of poisoning and their influential factors. This cross-sectional study was performed on the 240 poisoned patients(cases) admitted on tohid and Beasat hospitals in Sanandaj during May-october 1998. Data was collected by questionnaires and face to face interview with patients and their entourage and analyzed by Spss software using chi- square and fisher tests. Intentional and accidental poisoning constituted 54.6 % (131 cases) and 34.4% (109 cases) of poisoned cases respectively. The age of most of intentional poisoned cases (65.6%) was between 15-24. Most of the accidental poisonings (39.4%) occurred in children younger than 5 years old. There was significant relationship between age and sex of patients and the kind of poisoning. Intentional poisoning was more frequent in women (60.3%) and accidental poisoning occurred more in men (74.3%).There was a significant relationship between intentional poisoning and the presence of one type of psychiatric disorders. The most prevalent psychiatric disorders were major depression and adjustment disorders. Adjustment disorder was observed in 69.5% of intentional poisoned cases. The high rate of intentional poisoning in this study which is in contrast to those reported by others and involvement of 39.5% of intentional poisoned cases in adjustment disorder (acute life stress reaction) is a matter that must be considered in public health training.