Pattern of suicidal burn deaths autopsied at central delhi tertiary care hospital

Introduction: Suicides have now been a growing problem around the world. India now accounts for over a third of the world's annual female suicides and nearly a fourth of male suicides. Long standing frustrations, depressions, failures, decreasing human contact with increasing digitalization make people poor handlers of emotions and urges. Self Immolation (7.2%) being the third commonly employed method of suicide after hanging (45.6%) and Poisoning(27.9 %).This increasing suicidal rate requires addressal and pondering over it to help these troubled suicides.

Material & Methods: A retrospective five year study of pattern of the suicidal burn deaths was conducted in the cases brought to mortuary of Lok Nayak Hospital, New Delhi for post-mortem, from 1^st January 2014 to 31^st December 2018. A total of 101 suicidal death cases due to burn was studied over this period.

Results: During this five year study, a total of 649 suicidal death cases were brought to the mortuary out of which 101 were burn deaths.(15.56%)Out of these, males dominated the study with the ratio of 1.40. Most of the deceased were married and among these married people, maximum number was that of Females (57%). These cases mostly belonged to the age group of20-30 years in both the genders. Most of them had a body surface area involvement of around 90–100% and maximum of them died within 24 hours of sustaining burns.

Conclusion: Based on this study with females in the age group of 10–30 years and males in their 30-50years being the vulnerable target, they can be more directly focussed for counselling and provide medical treatment if and whenever required.