Suicide Attempt Patterns Among the Navajo Indians

THIS IS A REPORT of seven and one-half months of an on-going study of suicide and suicide attempts among the Navajo people. The study was undertaken in order to define the magnitude of the problem and to identify the high risk population. To date there have been only a few studies on successful suicides and even less on suicide attempts. A suicide report form was constructed. Copies were made available to all facilities serving the Navajo Indian Reservation. The psysician first having contact with a pateint filled out the form and returned it to the authors for review and tabulation. Results show that the highest risk group is younger than the general psychiatric population served. Drug ingestion is the most common method used. We have not found great differences between this population and other non- Indian populations described in the literature. This is true in respect to methods used as well as precipitating events. It seems clear that suicide attempt is a real problem for the Navajo. It is no greater, however, than for other groups of people.