General Health Status in a Cohort of Iranian Patients with Intentional Self-poisoning: A Preventive Approach

Background: prevention of suicide is one of the most importantissues of community medicine in the world. because of highaccessibility of people to different drugs in our society, one ofthe easiest ways of suicide is intentional self?poisoning. in thisstudy, demographic factors and health status of the patients withintentional self?poisoning were evaluated.methods: a cross?sectional study was conducted in the poisoningreferral center on 384 patients aged 15–40 years who committedintentional self?poisoning. information was gathered using twoquestionnaires about demographic characteristics and the generalhealth status of the patients.results: 70.5% of the patients had easy accessibility to drugs. mostof the patients were women (62.5%) and single (51%). history ofpsychological disease was demonstrated in 82.5% of patients. interms of general health status, the most common problems weresocial dysfunction (97.57%) and depression (88.9%).conclusion: easy accessibility to drugs and psychological problemsmay increase the risk of intentional self?poisoning. being religiousand the consequent hopefulness may have a positive protectingeffect for the prevention of intentional self-poisoning.