[Epidemiology of suicide in Yugoslavia--methodological questions].

This study deals with, what could be called the "Yugoslav suicide paradox", namely the fact that such a regional variety of suicide incidence can be observed on the comparatively small territory of Yugoslavia. The northern areas--Slovenia, Croatia and Vojvodina--show very high suicide rates, which surpass even the average of Northern and Central Europe--the cauldron of the highest suicide rates in the world (e.g. Slovenia = 32.7 in 1982). Towards the south and the east, the incidence of suicide is rapidly declining, so that the rates in Kosovo and Macedonia even amount to below the smallest European numbers concerned (e.g. Kosovo = 2.4 in 1982). Obviously, the "Yugoslav suicide paradox" can be suitably investigated only with a transcultural approach. The second postulaten in the designing of suicidal research in Yugoslavia as a whole, and it probably applies to suicidology in general, is the need for interdisciplinarity, since the most convincing answers to the questions which the epidemiology of suicide is raising, do not come from the side of medicine and biology, but still out of the facts disclosed by the socio-cultural and psycho-social circumstances in which the people are living. The study tries to illustrate this thesis with some demographical facts concerning four Yugoslav republics, resp. the autonomous provinces. The necessity for the replenishment of statistical and sociological statements with psycho-dynamically accentuated "psychological autopsies" (Sheidman), is also emphasized.