title: Empirical criteria for the determination of suicide manner of death.
abstract: A 16-item instrument was constructed as a tool to assist medicolegal official in their investigations and certifications of suicidal deaths. The Empirical Criteria for the Determination of Suicide (ECDS)--derived from a combined set of the 22 criterion items of the Operational Criteria for the Determination of Suicide (OCDS) and 33 other items obtained from experts and the professional literature--was constructed and validated by using 126 suicide and accident cases obtained from 70 medical examiner participants. Analysis of the cases confirmed that suicide is a manner of death in which there is evidence of both self-infliction and intention to die. The 16 items retained in the ECDS discriminated suicides from accidents best in relation to self-infliction and intention. In analysis of its concurrent validity, the ECDS instrument predicted 100% of the suicides and 83% of the accidents, thus correctly identifying 92% of all cases.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC.
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Jobes
authors.forename: J O
authors.initials: JO
authors.lastname: Casey
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Berman
authors.forename: D G
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Wright
mesh_terms: D002423:Cause of Death; D006801:Humans; D013405:Suicide