Covert Suicide: What It Is, Characteristics And Examples
Suicide today is one of the main health challenges worldwide, constituting a serious public health problem. And according to statistical studies by the World Health Organization (WHO), the annual number of suicides worldwide ranges between 800,000 and 1,000,000 homes; which has been one case of suicide every 40 seconds.
When a covert suicide has occurred, it is difficult to detect whether a death has truly been caused by an accident or whether it is a suicide. In the case of covert suicide, the person has chosen a way to commit suicide in a way that makes it suspicious that it is an accident.
In this article We will see what covert suicide consists of and some details about how it is usually carried out.
Sigmund Freud already talked about covert suicide in his day postulating that in addition to suicide that responds to an action that has been deliberate by the subject himself, there is also another type of suicide caused in order to respond to purposes at the unconscious level of the subject, this being covert suicide.
We speak of a hidden suicide as those cases in which It is difficult to know if the person died due to an accident or if it was a suicide. And the limits of a covert suicide are very diffuse, so in most of these cases it is very difficult to differentiate whether a death has been caused by a covert suicide or if it is an accident.
It is very important for professionals in the field do some very rigorous testing in order to clarify the differences between a case of covert suicide from those where the deceased person was prone to exposing themselves to high-risk situations, it being common that in these people, who like to practice risky activities, there are purposes of dominance or a search for reaffirmation of one’s self above the search for death, so in this second case we would speak of an accident and not a suicide.
Those cases in which people practice activities with a very high risk (for example, climbing skyscrapers, practicing some dangerous activity without adequate protection or participating in illegal motorcycle or car races without being a professional or without doing so on a circuit prepared for it) They have been baptized as “suicide orders”. In these cases, if a death occurred, it would be very difficult to differentiate if it was due to an accident or if it was a hidden suicide.
Most frequent forms of covert suicide
There are many ways in which a covert suicide could have been carried out, but it is difficult to detect if it has been caused intentionally or if, on the contrary, it is an accident. Below we will explain Some of the most common ways to carry out a covert suicide.
1. Unexplained traffic accidents
There have been many cases in which a traffic accident has occurred and it is difficult to explain how it could have occurred in such circumstances, which gives rise to researchers to consider the hypothesis that it was due to a covert suicide.
In research on suicide, numerous cases have been found that have been caused by the intention of the injured party to take his own life, which also It has been called autocide.
In the event that an autocide has occurred, it is often officially reported that it was a traffic accident in order to protect the family of the deceased person from social stigma.
Studies in this regard estimate that autocides or suicides account for more than 5% of deaths in traffic accidents. and that figure in the United States could rise to 15%.
2. Overdose
When a death occurs due to overdose, experts in the field say that it is not easy know if the person has accidentally exceeded the dose of the substance or if they have done so with the intention of committing suicide; as happened a few years ago in two very famous cases such as that of the actresses Marilyn Monroe and that of Romy Scheneider.
3. Intoxication
In cases of death due to poisoning, something similar to cases of overdose occurs. And in these cases also It is very complex to find out if the death was the result of an accident or if it was a case of hidden suicide.
4. Domestic accidents
There are cases of domestic deaths that have occurred due to an accident at home that can give rise to suspicions that a covert suicide could be behind the cause, which is a very complicated hypothesis to prove.
5. Drowning
There are studies that investigated various cases of drowning in several countries, finding that behind many drownings there could be a covert suicide, which proposed a preliminary hypothesis for psychological autopsies on suicide by drowning.
It drew attention to high number of drowning cases suspected to be caused by covert suicide in elderly people in Japan, among elderly Japanese women there is a rate of 13.5 cases per 100,000, which exceeds the rest of the groups classified by age and sex. However, it was also found that the number of cases of covert suicide by drowning was lower than that of accidental drowning.
In all these cases, the experts in performing the autopsy and the forensic examination, after having carried out the corresponding tests, will be in charge of clarifying the cause of death, and may consider the hypothesis that it was a covert suicide.
For all this, experts in the field affirm that Not all suicides that are recorded are truly suicide, but are the result of an accident. At the same time, not all deaths that have occurred due to suicide are proven, as is the case with many hidden suicides.
Pseudosuicides
In addition to covert suicide, there are other forms of suicide in which it is very difficult to know if the cause was the result of suicide, as is the case of pseudosuicides.
There are a series of behaviors whose final result is the death of the person who carries out those behaviors, but In these cases, the samples collected and the evidence point rather to the hypothesis that the person had no intention of committing suicide.
Pseudosuicides cover all those situations in which the cognitive and also the volitional capacities of the deceased subject are seriously affected, such as in those cases in which the person had received a diagnosis of schizophrenia or a confessional state, so that rejects the hypothesis that that person could have committed suicide.
However, part of the scientific community agrees that in these cases the death could be suicide. For this reason, statistical diagnostic manuals of utmost importance in the field of mental health, such as the DSM-5, propose “suicidal behavior disorder” as a diagnosis for future editions although more studies are still needed in this regard.
In suicidal behavior disorder, criteria D and E are specifiers that the act that caused death was not carried out during a state of confusion or delirium, and that it was not carried out for a political or political objective. religious, so that these specifications serve to rule out medical causes and spiritual and social motivations, so that in these cases we could be talking about another covert suicide or a pseudosuicide.
