Analysis of suicide in Toulouse: Recommendations on suicide prevention

Summary Worldwide, suicide remains a major public health problem whose impact in human and economic terms is important. Many studies have been carried out on this subject, including the study of risk factors for suicide. Nevertheless, in the absence of an effective and strengthened collaboration between the forensic institutes and the Epidemiological Centre on the Medical Causes of Death (CepiDc), epidemiological data concerning suicide in France remain underestimated, which impedes the implementation of an effective and necessary means of prevention against this scourge. In this work, we conducted an epidemiological profile of suicides at the forensic institute of Toulouse for 3 years. During the study period 715 cases of suicide were collected, with an overwhelming male predominance of 534 men (75%) and 181 women (25%). The average age was 53.94 years, with extremes of 12 and 101 years. Hanging was the most common method of suicide (41.7%) for both sex. Seasonal variations in the frequency of suicides were also reported during our study: lower frequencies in winter and higher frequencies in summer. Among the determinants of suicidal acts, depression (34.7%) was predominant among mental disorders in suicides.