An annual survey of successful suicide incidence in hamadan, Western iran.
BACKGROUND
Suicide has constituted a critical public health problem for many decades. The number of completed suicide is traditionally high in Iran. The objective of the present study was to describe the patterns of methods of suicide among registered deaths due to suicide in Hamada, western Iran.


METHODS
In this cross-sectional study, all completed suicide cases (n=146) were included from March 2004 through March 2005 based on Hamadan's Forensic center registered deaths because of suicide. Supplementary data were gauged through a questionnaire from the attemptersâ€™ relatives. All statistical analyses were performed using version 13 of the statistical software package SPSS and an alpha level of .05 for all statistical tests.


RESULTS
Prevalence of completed suicide was 8.3 per 100,000 in Hamadan, Iran. From 146 cases, the male-to-female ratio was 7.1:1. Average age of cases was 33.9 yr (Min=10, Max=94) across all age groups, males show consistently higher completed suicide rates than females. Of the 69.2% were from urban population versus 30.8% form rural population. The most common method of suicide was hanging (78.1 %). Other common methods were poisoning (11.6%), and self-burning (6.2%).


CONCLUSIONS
Suicide rate in Hamadan is high among males through hanging which can be due tosubstance dependency and unemployment.
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Research Center For Behavioral Disorders and Substance Abuse (RCBDASA), Farshchian  Hospital, University of Medical Sciences Hamadan, Iran.
A
A
Ghaleiha
M
M
Khazaee
S
S
Afzali
N
N
Matinnia
B
B
Karimi