In a figurative sense, reviving a person who has committed suicide is possible. There are cases of death in which the reasons or evidence are not very clear, so it is not known with certainty whether it is a suicide or a homicide.
To clarify doubtful deaths, a psychological autopsy is developed We will talk about it in this article.
The psychological autopsy is a process that involves multidisciplinary work that brings together doctors, criminologists and psychologists. Is an important technique used within the field of forensic psychology It is useful to determine causes or resolve cases of suicide, and the development of this technique began by addressing the need to define the cause of death in doubtful cases and in those for which the medical autopsy does not have sufficient evidence.
The participation of the Psychology area is essential for the process of analysis and decoding of clues. On many occasions, the fact that a death with dubious causes is studied from a single perspective or profession is not enough. Needed a team made up of different health professionals so that each one can analyze the case from their point of view and thus reach a more accurate and complete result.
The intervention of the forensic psychologist in clarifying the case is essential, since when he goes to the crime scene, he can begin to generate a sketch of the subject’s personality just by seeing the organization of your space, furniture, decorations, etc. When it came to achieving this, Schneidman, author of the technique, proposed three fundamental categories to investigate and analyze: what, how and why.
One of the main functions of the psychologist is interpret the signs and clues within a crime scene In addition to the medical autopsy, it is necessary to have access to the clinical history, medical and legal records, notes, letters, diary or anything else that can provide more information about how the subject felt, the thoughts he had before his death, own and learned ideas. The process starts from the same place of the events, in which not only objective traces can be raised, but also psychological traces that remain imprinted in the places where the victim was and in the people who interacted with him.
The MAPI technique
Within the psychological autopsy, The most used and most effective technique is MAPI whose acronyms mean the different areas of the individual in question that will be studied.
1. Mental
It refers to intelligence, memory, attention, judgment and cognition. With this there can be reference to the cognitive skills and abilities
2. Emotional or affective
Analyze the development and changes of mood. It is essential because it is what studies the mental state of the subject if there was any predisposition to suicidal behavior or ideas or if there were recurrent depressive episodes or the presence of some other disorder.
3. Psychosocial
It focuses on the background, since he was born, what his childhood, adolescence was like, etc. In the same way, it inquires about relationships with people from non-close circles and important changes throughout his life.
4. Interpersonal
It focuses on relationships with family and friends The importance of this is that people who were close to the deceased can be contacted and can contribute to the investigation process. Now… how should interviews be carried out with the friends and family of the deceased person? Let’s see it.
Carry out interviews with people close to the deceased It is the final step of this tool so widely used in psychological autopsy. Doing this has two main purposes:
Learn more about the victim your personality, character, daily activities and everything of which there is no written record or physical evidence.
It serves as a therapeutic form for family and close friends since they often express their feelings and thoughts about the situation.
It is established that the optimal time to carry them out is 1 to 6 months after the event. Doing them before can be counterproductive because the feelings and emotions are still very recent and can affect the interpretation and the way they remember the events. And doing them after the stipulated time, can cause memories to no longer be clear and people try to remake them or fill in the blanks they have with incorrect or false facts or elements.
The psychological autopsy is a new tool, barely developed in the 21st century, but in a short time it has proven to be useful in many cases in which medicine had not been sufficient to determine the causes of death. Any process related to human beings, until death, is extremely complex due to the nature of man. This is why it needs to be approached from a broad and multidisciplinary perspective.
