Aircraft-assisted pilot suicide is a rare but serious phenomenon. The aim of this study was to evaluate changes in pilot aircraft-assisted suicide risks, i.e., a copycat effect, in the U.S. and Germany after the Germanwings 2015 incident in the French Alps. Aircraft-assisted pilot suicides were searched in the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident investigation database and ...

BACKGROUND While coverage of a celebrity suicide in the mass media may trigger copycat suicides, evidence for the effect of media reports of non-prominent suicides is moderate. Diversification of current media may raise further doubts as to whether their influence on suicidal acts is still present. We examined whether widespread media coverage of a railway accident, in which several people were...

Suicide is the 15th leading cause of death worldwide, with over 75% of suicides occurring in low-income and middle-income countries. Nonetheless, evidence on the association between suicide and poverty in low-income and middle-income countries is scarce. We did a systematic review to understand the association between suicidal ideations and behaviours and economic poverty in low-income and midd...

Objective: To identify gender differences in violent deaths in terms of incidence, circumstances, and methods of death. Design: Analysis of surveillance data. Setting: North Carolina, a state of 8.6 million residents on the eastern seaboard of the US. Subjects: 1674 North Carolina residents who died from violence in the state during 2004. Methods: Information on violent deaths was collected by ...

A stress-diathesis explanatory model of suicidal behaviour has proved to be of heuristic value, and both clinical and neurobiological components can be integrated into such a model. A trait deficiency in serotonin input to the anterior cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortex is found in association with suicide, and more recently non-fatal suicidal behaviour, and is linked to decision-maki...

This paper is a 10-year review (2003-2012) of aircraft-assisted pilot suicides and is a follow up to our previous 1993-2002 review. From 2003-2012, there were 2,758 fatal aviation accidents; 8 were aircraft-assisted suicides (intentional crashing of aircraft). This is half of what we found in our previous 10-year review. All pilots involved in these suicides were male (median age 46, range 21-6...

People have an inherent tendency to view events as being more predictable than they may actually be, especially in hindsight. This predisposition is known as hindsight bias. However, putting hindsight bias aside, one should consider the discussion in the media raised by the recent Germanwings Flight 9525 air accident from a medical point of view. The probability that aircrafts are used to assis...

In the literature on subject, suicide is considered as a specific social phenomenon - one of deviant behaviors, which also an indicator disintegration. Due to fact that effects are social, classified pathology, referred disease. Objective: To indicate important problem with increasing trend. Hypothesis: Adolescence period when there significant risk committing suicide. Methods: The study used m...

Accidents and posttraumatic injuries are one of the most important health and social problems. Most of them require immediate medico-surgical intervention. Accidents are the leading cause of death among young people under age of 40. In 25% of cases they lead to disability. Fall from height causes inter alia blunt chest trauma, and internal organs contusion (e.g. heart and lungs), and may be fat...

An autopsy study of fatal deliberate self-harm in adolescents (10-19 years) was undertaken in the Department of Forensic Medicine, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, South India, over a period of 5 years (2005 to 2009). Nearly four percent (31 cases) of the total unnatural deaths in whom autopsy was conducted at our mortuary were due to suicide in adolescent age group, which formed the material...