Fatal Suicide and Modelling its Risk Factors in a Prevalent Area of Iran

This paper aimed to study the epidemiology of suicide and causes related to fatal suicide in Ilam province, west of Iran.

All data related to attempted suicide and fatal suicide during 2011-2012 were extracted from the suicide registry of authorized directorates in Ilam Province, Iran. Risk factors for fatal suicide were evaluated using logistic regression modeling and discrimination of model assessed using ROC curve.

A total of 1537 registered cases were analyzed, among which 130 were recorded as fatal suicides (1227 attempted suicides). Overall, 805 (52.4%) cases were female, 9.2% had a history of suicide, 59.3% were married and 63.3% of cases were aged under 24 years. The most common suicide method was overdose of medications (75.5%). In multivariable analysis, male gender (OR: 0.50; CI 95% 0.25 to 0.99) and higher education (OR: 0.36; CI 95% 0.20 to 0.65) were protective factors and application of physical methods (OR: 11.61; 95% CI 5.40 to 24.95) was a risk factor for fatal suicide.

Female gender, low education level and use of physical methods of suicide were revealed as risk factors of fatal suicide. We suggest population based case-control studies based on the suicide registry data for further assessing the risk factors of suicide in Ilam.