The More Autopsies Done, The More Suicides Are Reported

The More Autopsies Done, The More Suicides Are Reported

Suicide statistics can appear to measure only human behavior, but they also reflect how carefully deaths are investigated. Research by West Virginia University scholar Ian Rockett shows that when a county performs more autopsies, it tends to identify more suicides. The reason is not necessarily that more people are dying by suicide in those places, but that more thorough investigations make intent easier to establish.

If officials spend more time examining a death, gathering evidence, and completing detailed death certificates, they are more likely to classify an ambiguous death as intentional rather than accidental or undetermined. This pattern suggests that suicide rates are shaped partly by resources: better-staffed coroners and medical examiners can investigate more deeply, and their records therefore capture more cases.  Evidence from Austria supports the same conclusion, finding that higher autopsy rates are associated with higher recorded suicide rates. 

Together, these findings show that official suicide rates may rise when death-investigation systems improve, even if the underlying number of self-inflicted deaths has not changed. Autopsies do not create suicides; they reveal them. Therefore, comparisons between counties or countries must be made cautiously, because higher suicide rates may indicate better detection as much as greater despair.

Source:

Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me 
Anna Mehler Paperny