Introduction: Suicide is one of the leading causes of premature death in young adults. Among the major risk factors for suicide is a pre-existing suicide attempt. Self-poisoning is the most common form of suicide at-tempt, so we decided to examine the clinical profile of people with this experience to contribute to the design of prevention programs in order to reduce suicide rate. The Aim: The aim was to analyze sociodemo-graphic and psychopathological characteristics, and health of patients who were under psychiatric treatment due to deliberate self-poisoning. Material and Methods: We analyzed 190 patients (99 women and 91 men) who were admitted to the Clinic for Psychiatry of the Clinical Cen-ter of Vojvodina in 2020, after deliberate self-poisoning. Medical records were used to collect psychopathological and sociodemographic charac-teristics, physical health data, characteristics related to the act, and the substance used for self-poisoning. Results: The average age was 39.01 ± 15.44 years. It was determined that, during the analyzed period, the most common motive for self-poisoning was suicide. Women were more often treated for suicidal and non-suicidal intentions, while men were more often hospitalized for abusing substances. The prevalence of previous psychiatric treatment existed in 65.8% of respondents, while 29.47% of them had this experience before. Suicidal intent was most common in pa-tients with depressive disorders, while those with substance addiction were motivated by avoiding withdrawal symptoms or pleasure. Personal psychiatric therapy was used for self-poisoning in 42.86% of patients. The most commonly used substance was benzodiazepines. Conclusion: In order to prevent intentional self-poisoning, it is necessary to recog-nize psychiatric disorders and to attend early treatment. Increased con-trol of prescription of psychotropic drugs, primarily benzodiazepines, could reduce the incidence of self-poisoning phenomena.
Cite this paper
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