Psychological autopsy in suicides

Abstract

The phenomenon of suicide is difficult to address, both at the family level, at the society level, and at the institutional level, as in the case of the Attorney General's Office and the Institute of Legal Medicine. In his work Morron P. (1992) refers to Durkheim's definition in which he mentions that suicide is "any case of death that results directly or indirectly from an act, positive or negative, committed by the victim, knowing that it will produce said result. When cases of suicide occur, a psychological expert technique is carried out which allows for a broader vision in any investigation in the case of suspicious deaths. We specifically talk about the psychological autopsy, but what is the psychological autopsy? Otin del Castillo J. (2009) in his work cites Lucero et al., (2003), to define psychological autopsy, where he mentions: "psychological autopsy is a scientific method to reconstruct death by suicide through interviews with "survivors, understood as those close to the person who committed suicide." According to Dr. Enrique Valdez, head of the department of forensic behavioral sciences at the "Alberto Masferrer" Institute of Legal Medicine (2020), he mentions that the psychological autopsy, "is a forensic expert report that is fundamentally used for experts to reconstruct in an academic manner." and following a standardized and globally validated methodology, the moments close to the death of a person based on their personality, the presence or absence of mental disorders and the probability that it was a suicide. However, suicide is a topic that is rarely talked about in the judicial system. Although there is data on suicide cases in our country, very little information is provided about it.