Revista de Artes e Ciências Sociais

An Analysis Of Self-Inflicting Violence In The English-Speaking Caribbean

Abstract

Tazhmoye V Crawford

Injuries including those that are self-inflicted results in 12% of the world’s burden of disease. In the case of attempted suicide, this attracts global disability adjusted life years lost (11%) throughout the World, while in the Caribbean, potential years of life lost represents 27%. These are manifested in the form of (i) microfracture of vertebrae; (ii) echimosis (from asphyxiation); (iii) long-term developmental, reproductive and systemic effects (from poisoning); inter alia. The aim of the study was to analyze the impact of self-inflicting violence on the well-being of individuals in the English-Speaking Caribbean. Information was obtained via field research (convenience and snowball sampling), police statistics using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) 17.0 to analyze the data. Self-inflicting violence in the form of attempted suicide has shown constant increase over the period 2005 (N=121) to 2006 (N=134), but a slight decline in 2007 (N=133). Attempted suicide was significantly dominant among female than male, especially those within the 10-44 age cohort. Males were more likely to fail at attempted suicide than their female counterparts were over the period 2003-2007 (male = 225, female = 38). The method of suicide most practiced in Jamaica over the period 2003-2008 was hanging, followed by shooting, poisoning and drowning. The least practiced methods were jumping and electrocution. In 2008, causes of such suicide methods were as a result of depression (19.1%), domestic matters (10.6%), mental disorder (8.5%), murder (2.1%), and unknown (59.6%). Self-inflicting violence (commonly drug overdose, cutting, hanging, poisoning, shooting) bears serious socio-medical implications and has economic impact on both individuals and states.