Covert suicide: what it is, characteristics and examples

Let's see what covert suicide is and why it is complicated to understand its causes.

Suicide is currently one of the main challenges facing healthcare worldwide, as it constitutes a serious public health problem. According to statistical studies by the World Health Organization (WHO), the annual number of suicides worldwide is between 800,000 and 1,000,000,000; that is, one case of suicide every 40 seconds.

When a covert suicide has occurred, it is difficult to detect whether a death was actually caused by an accident or whether it is a suicide. In the case of a covert suicide, the person has chosen a way to commit suicide in a way that raises suspicions that it was an accident.

In this article we will see what covert suicide consists of and some details about how it is usually carried out.

What is covert suicide?

Sigmund Freud already spoke in his day of the covert suicidepostulating that besides the suicide that responds to an action that has been deliberate by the own subject, also there is another type of suicide caused with the purpose of responding to purposes to unconscious level of the subject, being this the covert suicide.

We speak of covert suicide as those cases in which it is difficult to know if the person has died. it is difficult to know if the person has died as a result of an accident or if it is a suicide.. The limits of a covert suicide are very blurred, so that in most of these cases it is very difficult to differentiate whether a death has been caused by a covert suicide or an accident.

It is very important for the professionals in the field to to make very rigorous tests in order to clarify the differences between a case of covert suicide and those where the deceased was prone to expose himself to high-risk situations, being frequent that in these people, who like to practice risky activities, there are some purposes of mastery or a search for reaffirmation of self over the search for death, so 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 protections or participating in illegal motorcycle or car races without being a professional or without doing it in a circuit prepared for it) have been baptized as "suicide ordeals".. In these cases, if a death were to occur, it would be very difficult to differentiate whether it was an accident or a covert suicide.

Most frequent forms of covert suicide.

There are many ways in which a covert suicide may have been carried out, but it is difficult to detect whether it was caused intentionally or whether, on the contrary, it was an accident. Below we will explain some of the most some of the most frequent ways of carrying out a covert suicide.

1. Unexplained traffic accidents

There have been many cases in which there has been a traffic accident that is difficult to explain how it could have occurred under such circumstances, leading investigators to hypothesize that it may have been caused by a covert suicide.

In research on suicide, numerous cases have been found to have been caused by the intention of the victim to take his or her own life, which has also been referred to as has also been referred to as self-inflicted suicide..

In the case of a self-inflicted suicide, it is often officially reported as a traffic accident in order to protect the family of the deceased from social stigma.

Studies estimate that self-inflicted suicide accounts for more than 5% of traffic accident deaths, with the figure rising in some cases to more than 5% in others.and in the United States this figure may be as high as 15%.

2. Overdose

When a death by overdose occurs, experts in the matter affirm that it is not easy to know if the person has overdosed. to know if the person has exceeded the dose of the substance accidentally or if he has done it 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 Romy Scheneider.

3. Intoxication

In cases of death by intoxication, something similar to cases of overdose occurs. In these cases, too, it is very it is very complex to find out if the death was the result of an accident or if it was a case of covert suicide..

4. Domestic accidents

There are cases of domestic deaths that have been produced by an accident in the home that can give rise to suspicions that a covert suicide could be the cause, being a very complicated hypothesis to prove.

5. Drowning

There are studies that investigated several cases of drowning in various countries, finding that behind many drownings could be a covert suicide, which proposed a preliminary hypothesis for psychological autopsies on suicide by drowning.

Attention was drawn to the high number of drowning The high number of drowning cases suspected to be caused by covert suicide in elderly people in Japan was striking.Among elderly Japanese women, there was a rate of 13.5 cases per 100,000, which exceeded all other age and sex groups. However, it was also found that the number of cases of covert suicide by drowning was lower than that of drowning by accident.

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, being able to contemplate the hypothesis that it was a covert suicide.

For all these reasons, experts in the matter affirm that not all suicides that are recorded are truly suicides, but are the result of an accident.. At the same time, not all the deaths that have come to occur as a result of suicide, as in the case of many covert suicides, are proven.

Pseudosuicides

In addition to covert suicide, there are other forms of suicide in which it is very complex to know if the cause has been the result of a suicide, as is the case of pseudo-suicides.

There are a number of behaviors that ultimately result in the death of the person who engages in those behaviors, but in these cases the samples collected and the evidence point to the hypothesis that the person did not have any intention to commit suicide. in these cases the samples collected and the evidence point rather to the hypothesis that the person did not have any intention to commit suicide..

Pseudo-suicides include all those situations in which the cognitive and volitional capacities of the deceased are severely affected, such as in those cases in which the person had received a diagnosis of schizophrenia or a confessional state, so that the hypothesis that the person could have committed suicide is dismissed.

However, part of the scientific community agrees that in these cases suicide could be the cause of death. For this reason, statistical diagnostic manuals of great 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.although more studies are still lacking in this regard.

In suicidal behavior disorder, criteria D and E are specifiers that the act that caused the death was not carried out during a state of confusion or delirium, and that it was not carried out for a political or religious objective, so that these specified criteria 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 pseudo-suicide.