Epidemiologija suicida u Republici Hrvatskoj

In the Republic of Croatia, ever more attention has been lately systematically paid to suicide and suicidal behavior, as also evidenced by the recently organized First Croatian Congress on Suicide and Suicidal Behavior, held in Zagreb in December 2000. Investigating the problem of suicide through epidemiologic analyses belongs to the most widely used methods. The authors analyzed the epidemiology of suicide in the Republic of Croatia on the basis of data obtained from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and State Bureau of Statistics for the 1990-1999 period (1998). The authors followed the total number of suicides, gender, age and motive distribution, as well as the means of performance. The epidemiologic data from various sources were found to significantly differ. In the future, it would be necessary to reach consensus among the services involved in registering and follow-up of suicide and suicidal behaviour, in order to establish a basis for more effective prevention.