Intoxication--suicide or not?

It is often impossible to decide whether a death due to poisoning with drugs and/or alcohol is accidental or intentional. In 1965 WHO introduced the category "uncertain cases of death" in the official statistics. The number of cases in this category has increased and constitutes at present in Sweden between 30 and 70 per cent of the total number of suicides. In Malmö (1972-1973) most of these deaths were due to lethal poisoning with drugs and/or alcohol. When discussing suicidal rates it is important to include those cases.