Citation

Aquila I, Sacco MA, Gratteri S, Sirianni M, De Fazio P, Ricci P. Leg. Med. (Elsevier) 2017; 32: 79-82.

Affiliation

Magna Graecia University, Chair of Legal Medicine, Viale Europa Loc. Germaneto, 88100 Catanzaro, Italy.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Japanese Society of Legal Medicine, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.legalmed.2017.12.008

PMID

29587181

Abstract

Suicide is a huge deal in general public health, representing the second cause of mortality in young people worldwide. The suicidal setting analysis is usually performed through psychological autopsy, a method of investigation commonly used to study what leads to suicide. Psychological autopsy, though, requires the involvement of family and friends, or the finding of a diary or a suicide note. Nowadays, this is not always possible, especially during adolescence, the more if we consider new categories of people that are more used to live in a web dimension, than in a real one. So, with the advent of a new kind of social system including the web, psychological autopsy, as we know it, is not enough to determine the setting of an event. We here report the case of a 17-year old girl who committed suicide by hanging down from her house, leaving no suicide note. We propose a new investigation method developed through the analysis of phone messages and Facebook profile in order to better reconstruct the event. Although the standing difficulties in reconsidering the intimate motivations leading to such a decision, psychological autopsy nowadays needs to consider also social networks in order to prevent similar situations and even reconstruct the psychological dimension of the fact. We propose a model of Social-mobile autopsy.

Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Facebook; Forensic investigations; New technologies; Psychological autopsy; Social mobile autopsy; Suicide