Iranian Journal of Forensic Medicine
Year:2017 | Volume:23 | Issue:1|Papers Count:10

Background and Aims: Suicide is one of the major problems in the modern world that calls for investigation in different periods. This study was an epidemiological survey of the patients who had attempt suicide admitted to Hazrat Rasoul Hospital in a five-year period in Tehran.Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the data on the 483 attempted suicide cases from 2007 to 2011 were collected from Hazrat Rasoul Hospital Patients’ records. The data were gathered with a structured checklist and analyzed with SPSS 16.Results: The results showed that among attempted suicide cases 78.3% were those who had no academic education, 72% were below the age of 30 years, 64.8% were unmarried, 51.3% were men and 32.9% were housewives. Moreover, 40.7% of the cases reported the history of mental illnesses with depression and schizophrenia at the highest rate of occurrence. Thirty-three percent of the suicides were attempted at nighttime, 69% on early weekdays, and 33.4% in winter. Family struggles with the rate of 48.9% and psychological disorders with the rate of 24.8% were the main causes of suicide attempt, respectively. Fifty-seven percent of the cases abused tablets and 29.4% cut their hand veins as the most common methods of suicide. Only 3% of the cases had led to death.Conclusion: Young, unmarried people, those with a history of psychological disorders and unsuccessful suicide attempts are at the higher risk of attempting suicide and should be more closely observed in preventive programs.

Introduction& objectives: The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among murderers who were referred to the Psychiatric Commission of the Legal Medicine Office of Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi, for evaluation of their mental status from March 2013 to March 2015.Methods: The research is a descriptive – retrospective one. The studied population in this research were the murderers referred to the Legal Medicine Office of Khorasan Razavi from March 2013 to March 2015. A check-list was designed on the basis of the content of their records and the results declared by the Psychiatric Commision, and the needed quantitative and qualitative data were gathered and recorded, and finally the findings were analyzed using SPSS software and chi2 test.Results: In this study, a total of 90 cases were investigated that 44 (49.4%) belonged to the first year and 45 (50.6%) to the second year. Fifty five point two percent of them had a history of addiction or continued drug abuse. Among these murderers 17.2 % had a record of psychiatric disease diagnosed by a psychiatrist.31.8% had a history of taking psychiatric drugs, 17% had a history of psychiatric hospitalization 70.1% were cases of self injury and 28.7% had a history of suicide attempts, while 31.8% had some form of mental disorder and 12.8% were diagnosed as not responsible for his actions.Conclusion: According to the results of this study 61.7 % of murderers had no major psychiatric disorders but this does not mean that these people are mentally healthy, since they are not sufficiently skilled in communication skills and problem solving, anger control and overall judgment. This points to the need for planning community mental health promotion, life skills training (stress management, anger management, etc.) and prevention of violent crimes such as murder.

Introduction: Despite the undeniable value of “virginity”, misconceptions and value system changes related to virginity has become a serious threat to the sexual health of communities in recent decades.Object: This study is aimed to investigate the conception virginity and its role in reproductive health promotion.Methods: This review was done through information related to 1980 to 2015 getting from SID, Ovid Science Direct, Pub Med, Pro Quest, Iran Medex, Google, Scirus, Cochrane library, MD Consult, EBSCO, Scholar, UNFPA and WHO.Findings: Despite Sexual abstinence approaches in recent decades which is a valuable step towards controlling the negative consequences of increasing premarital sex misconceptions such as the worth of female virginity worth versus the shame of male’s, the idea of keeping virginity despite oral and anal sex and wedding night bleeding as a sign of virginity and accepting of intact hymen as the only indicator of virginity face these approaches with failure. Besides by conflicts such as gender inequality and violence against women are threatened for reproductive health.Conclusion: Although in recent decades sexual abstinence approaches have become an opportunity to promote virginity and control of sexual transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy, misconceptions associated with virginity are serious threats to sexual abstinence. Therefore, the use of cultural, social and religious potentials of different societies to cope with the misconceptions and teaching of objective facts associated with virginity and hymen seems necessary to promote sexual abstinence.

Background: Vegetative state is a chronic disability that may occur following coma caused for any reason in a patient. In these patients, in spite of wakefulness, they have no knowledge about themselves and their surroundings. This topic is still followed by neurologists under different titles including its treatment, But in forensic medicine centers main issues are diagnostic challenges and how to deal with these patients to determine the value of the insurance. In this article, we have tried to briefly review the disease, provide a simple checklist for diagnosis and to how to determine the compensation that should be paid.Methods: Using databases such as PUBMED, MEDLINE, to find authentic and, relevant articles, new articles were searched and then evaluated. Necessary information were collected and presented.Conclusion: Although the diagnosis is challenging, but compliance with the above mentioned condition mistakes in diagnosis can be avoided. The final expert opinion should be given one year after the onset of this state (which has a minimum chance of improvement) and following completion of the case. Verifying the diagnosis should be done by at least two neurologists, separately, and in two different sessions of clinical examination. One the other hand, agreeing on a unique protocol for determining the amount of compensation, will result in avoiding discordance in expert opinions in a single case.

Background and Purpose: Insanity as one of the factors of criminal responsibility relieves criminals from punishment. Although Insanity in the context of criminal liability has an important role, none of the laws and definitions provided by lawyers properly explain aspects and dimensions of this issue. This ambiguity has made the claim of insanity an excuse to escape from punishment. This gap shows the need for research in this context regard.Methods: In the present study, the cases of that have been referred to the Kerman branch of the Iranian Legal Medicine Organization, as cases of insanity through the years 2012-2014 have been reviewed. The legal and psychological concept of insanity on the basis of the criteria provided in the Iranian Penal Code (2012) was also considered in this context. The required data were gathered and then analyzed using SPSS software.Results: This was a descriptive – cross sectional study. During the study 75 cases referred to the department of forensic psychiatric examinations of Kerman that were associated with psychiatric disorders were studied. Of these, 21 patients had clinical disorders, 35 patients had personality disorders and 9 were diagnosed as cases mental retardation, but only 5 cases of personality disorder were diagnosed as insane, in its Legal-juridical sense.Conclusion: The results of the study showed that although there are some analogies between mental disorders and insanity in law but it cannot be said that all psychiatric disorders are insanity and in all cases, decisions should be taken on the basis of psychological expert opinions.

Introduction& objectives: Organ donation after brain death is a social deed dependent on the decision and consent of the person doing it and knowledge and attitude in this regard, are considered as stimulating factors for such a deed. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the knowledge and attitude about organ donation among students of Qom University of Medical Sciences.Methods: The cross-sectional study was carried out among students of Qom University of Medical Sciences of which 304 students participated through selection by the multistage sampling method. The data were gathered using a valid and reliable questionnaire containing questions about demographic characteristics, knowledge and attitude. Data were analyzed by SPSS V.19 using independent t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient with a 0.05 significance level.Results: This study showed that the knowledge about organ donation was high (34.85%), moderate (45.93%) and low (19.22%) among the studied subjects. Also, the attitude toward organ donation was high (33.88%), moderate (41.69%) and low (24.43%) in the same group. Of these students 12.83% had organ donation card and 87.17% did not have it. There was a significant difference in the mean scores of knowledge and attitude between holders and nonholders of organ donation card. The mean scores of knowledge and attitude toward organ donation among medical students was significantly higher than other students.Conclusion: The results showed that most of these students did not have organ donation card. In addition, the knowledge and attitude about organ donation was at the moderate level. Therefore, it seems necessary to promote public motivation for organ donation, through education and popular campaigns.

Background: One of the new and important medical issues in treatment of patients is harvesting organs from braindead patients to be transplanted into patients in need. The issue of transplanting organs harvested from brain-dead patients is one of the emerging issues, with many positive and negative potential consequences and therefore it should be regulated by legislation. In this respect, the legislator has decided to regulate the issue of organ transplantation by providing a legal act that was ratified in 2001. Although the legislation could eliminate some ambiguities in this regard, but in practice, there are still some weaknesses and ambiguities in the law. This article examines the gaps and shortcomings of that law regarding organ transplants taken from brain dead patients and provides suggestions in order to reduce legal problems of the emerging efforts in this relatively new field of medicine.Methods: Literature review, descriptive methods and, when necessary, expert opinions, mainly collected through interviews with experts of the field, were used to explain and analyze the relevant issues.Results: The organ transplantation law deals with issues such as a person’s will to donate organs, consent of the donor’s relatives for donating the organs and ascertainment regarding occurrence of brain death. Although the act has been relatively useful, there are such shortcomings in it that cause many problems for its application in practice (e.g. not recognizing the organ donation card as a proof for consent, not determining the exact time of death in brain dead patients, not determining the consequences in cases of refusal to give consent by relatives or cases regarding unidentified brain dead patients.Although the most effective and important way to solve these problems includes revision, correction and completion of the existing law, obtaining the legal permission issued by the supreme leader or his representative in this regard (e.g. about unidentified brain dead patients) may be considered as a quick solution.

Background: Lawyers know the growth as a qualitative right that the owner can recognize the benefit or harm in civil development and good and evil in regard to criminal growth. According to Article 91 of the new Islamic criminal law, the court can inquire the recognition of the maturity and wisdom from legal medicine organization. Finding specific criteria to assess the full development of rational juvenile growth in order to determine criminal responsibility for financial management ability is essential. Evaluation of emotional intelligence, intellectual intelligence and emotional intelligence indices can be useful as diagnostic criteria in approving intellectual growth.Methods: In a prospective study, all offender and non-offender individuals under 18 years old referred to Legal Medicine Organization of Fars province in order to get growth certificate from April 2015 to the end of September 2015 were included in this study. For all of them, intelligence quotient, emotional intelligence and, excitement control index were investigated. The intelligence quotient, emotional intelligence and, excitement control criterion were determined using standard psychological tests and were compared between the two groups of offenders and non-offenders.Findings: A total of 71 individuals £ 18 years, including 27 boys and 44 girls with an average age of 15.9 ± 1.5 referred to the Fars Legal medicine Organization were evaluated during the first 6 months of 1394 Gulf. Of these, 9 patients (12.6 %) were male and offenders the rest had no history of crime. Average score of intelligence on offender group was of 75.62±7.96 and for non-offenders group was 110.09±13.87 that there was a significant difference in this respect between the two groups (P=0.000). Average score of emotional intelligence for offender group was 102.87±14.01 and for non-offenders group it was obtained 127.40 ± 17.35, which offenders’ score was significantly lower than non-offenders’ score (P=0.000). The average scores of emotion regulation index of offender group obtained the 38.50±9.87 score and for non-offenders group it was 51.80±8.13; obtained score of non-offender group was significantly higher than the offenders (P=0.006).Conclusion: As a result, the intelligence quotient, emotional intelligence and excitation regulation index in nonoffenders was more than of offenders. Considering significant difference of intelligence quotient, emotional intelligence and excitation regulation index between the two groups, it seems that these three factors have a significant impact on an individual’s deal with stress and mental conditions, psychological impulse control. Finally, the offender of aggression had. Low total cost of the three indices, however, can amount to a lack of intellectual growth offender is under 18, but the high level of these components in non-criminal cannot approve the applicant’s sentence and ability to run the intellectual growth of finance in the necessarily endorsing individuals.