[Adolescents' suicide attempt with their parent's psychotropic medication: descriptive study]

To determine the frequency in adolescents under 21 years old hospitalized in the Psychiatric Unit of Hospital Italiano of Buenos Aires because of suicide attempt with pills taken by their parents.

This study was carried out in a population of patients under 21 years old hospitalized in the Psychiatric Unit of Hospital Italiano of Buenos Aires between September 2004 and February 2006.

This is a quantitative, prospective, observational and transversal study. The variables considered were age, gender, cause of admission, suicide method. When the attempt was done with pills we considered what kind of pills and whom they belong to; we also asked about familiar psychiatric history and familiar history of suicide attempt and suicide.

We analyzed data from 85 patients. 67% (n=57) were female and 33% (n=28) male. Age range was between 13 and 21 years with a media of 18,05 +/- 2 years. The principal cause of admission was suicide attempt (40,5 +/- 3,68%) (n=45). The suicide attempt method most frequently used was the ingestion of pills (77,8 +/- 9,6%) (n=35).

The majority of adolescents who took pills did it with medication belonging to their parents ( 82,8 +/- 16,32%) (n=29). Within this medication 93% (n=27) were psychotropics. The availability of suicide methods is related directly to suicide. Without this methods near many autoagressive impulses may be restrained. The importance of this availability of this methods is often underestimated instead of being modified by prevention.