The Medico-legal journal
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The Medico-legal journal · Dec 2020
Case ReportsQuarantine of the Covid-19 pandemic in suicide: A psychological autopsy.
The epidemiology of suicide has identified numerous psychiatric and occupational risk factors. The circumstances surrounding a suicide are fundamental to determining whether its characteristics will play a crucial role in the decision-making process. The state of emergency arising from the Covid-19 pandemic has introduced a new element, given the general concern and feelings of alarm which are global. ⋯ We set out to consider how far this together with other factors may induce suicide. The literature does not as yet offer us a retrospective analysis of the influence of the global pandemic state on rates of suicide. Accordingly, we report a forensic case and examine the critical issues and problems in the management of these cases.
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During the Covid-19 pandemic, many countries around the world are considering whether and how to provide liability protection to front-line healthcare staff. The guiding principle of liability protection for physicians and others is to ensure that, in a serious emergency situation, health professionals can devote themselves exclusively to their work and to patient care, without the fear of future claims for unforeseeable, but above all unavoidable, injury, loss and damage caused by their conduct. Great care is needed to balance the interests and rights of all those involved. Liability protection could have risky consequences with the final result that doctors will not be protected, but institutions such as health facilities will be even if they were in fact responsible for foreseeable and avoidable damage.