兒童企圖自殺之臨床分析

Suicide Attempts in Children

盧文雄(Wen-Hsiung Lu) ； 魏火曜(Huo-Yao Wei)

《Acta Paediatrica Sinica》 7卷3期 (1966/09) Pp. 157-160

並列摘要

Recently, suicide attempts in children became an important public health problem in Taiwan.
During the period from January 1960 to September 1966 a total of 20 cases of suicidal attempts in children under the age of 15 years were treated at the Emergency Service of N. T. U. Hospital. An analysis of these cases and a brief review of literature are presented.
Of the 20 cases, 4 were males and 16 were females, and the age of patients ranged between 12 and 15 years, with 10 girls of 14 years.
The means used for the attempts were mostly ingestions of sleeping pills or rodenticides which could easily be bought from drug stores without a doctor's prescription. Only 1 male of this series died. There was no relationship between suicide attempts and the birth order.
All the 20 cases were from middle or low income classes and some of them were from broken families (divorce or death of one parent).
Seasonal distribution showed more suicidal attempts in the months of April May, August and September. The majority of attempts occurred late in the afternoon or at midnight.
The direct reasons for suicide in this series include: 1 case with love problem, 5 cases with school problems, 5 cases with family problems and 9 cases unknown. None of these cases showed true psychotic reaction.