• Burns · Nov 2016

    Suicide by self-immolation in Tunisia: A 10 year study (2005-2014).

    • Mehdi Ben Khelil, Amine Zgarni, Malek Zaafrane, Youssef Chkribane, Meriem Gharbaoui, Hana Harzallah, Ahmed Banasr, and Moncef Hamdoun.
    • Faculty of Medicine, University Tunis El Manar, Tunis, Tunisia; Department of Legal Medicine, Charles Nicolle Hospital, Tunis, Tunisia. Electronic address: benkhelilmehdi@yahoo.fr.
    • Burns. 2016 Nov 1; 42 (7): 1593-1599.

    IntroductionIn Tunisia, few data are available about self-immolation epidemiology especially in the absence of official statistics on suicides. The aim of our study was to analyze the trends of suicide by self-immolation over a period of ten years (2005-2014).MethodsWe conducted a descriptive, retrospective study including all the cases of self-immolation suicides that occurred over a period of 10 years (2005-2014) and autopsied in the Department of Legal Medicine of the Charles Nicolle Hospital of Tunis, including self-immolation occurring in Northern Tunisia as well as those committed in remaining governorates and transferred before death to the central intensive care unit of burnt in Tunis receiving patients from all over Tunisia (about 80% of cases occurring in Tunisia).Results235 cases of self-immolation were collected. The average age at death was 34.1±12.43 years (range 14-83 years). Gender ratio was of 3.27. Psychiatric history was mentioned in 32.8% of cases, represented by schizophrenia in 17.9% and depression in 12.3% of cases. 12.3% had a history of suicide attempts, and 7.3% presented a history of suicidal threats. The number of casualties of suicide by self-immolation tripled after 2011 with a rising trend during the next three years and slight drop in 2014. The most reported reason in our study was decompensation of a psychiatric illness (24.7%). Self-immolation occurred most frequently in a private home (34.5%) or a public place (30.2).ConclusionOur study showed that self-immolation affects essentially, young men, who are unemployed and mostly having mental diseases.Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd and ISBI. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…