Factors Associated with Cocaine Consumption among Suicide Victim

Abstract

Cocaine use is an increasingly frequent event, especially in young people, and can cause irreversible consequences, such as suicide. To evaluate the factors associated with cocaine use in the moments preceding to suicide. This is a population-based, cross-sectional, and analytical study conducted in the Brazilian Federal District by researchers from the Department of Health and the Civil Police Institute of Criminalistics. All people who died due to suicide in 2018 were included in the survey. Cocaine use was considered the dependent variable, and robust Poisson regression was performed to estimate the crude and adjusted prevalence ratios and their respective population confidence intervals. In 2018, 12,157 deaths were recorded, of which suicide accounted for 1.56% of all deaths. It was observed that being between 25 and 44 years old, male, and under the influence of alcohol or cannabis, had a strong positive association with cocaine consumption among suicide victims. Males, people with black skin, with lower level of education, with employment, and who were under the effect of the use of cannabis and/or alcohol in the previous hours of death had a higher propensity to consume cocaine immediately before suicide, with a moderate to strong magnitude of prevalence ratio. The findings of this research indicated the need for monitoring, by health services, of people most vulnerable to suicide through the consumption of psychoactive substances.

Keywords: cocaine; death certificates; information systems; suicide.