Suicide in Bristol

“That the deceased took his life while the balance of his mind was temporarily disturbed” has been the Coroner's traditional verdict in cases of suicide; a verdict adopted to circumvent retribution by society and particularly to allow of burial in consecrated ground and avoid forfeiture of property to the Crown (Williams, 1958). There is a distinction between such a finding with its legal import and that of the psychiatric assessment, and this must necessarily affect psychiatric studies undertaken in the endeavour to understand the state of mind of the person who encompasses his own death, or to examine the wider implications of suicide in relation to the epidemiology of mental illness. Public opinion and cultural pressures have their effects on coroners' verdicts; and guilt or shame on the part of relatives or medical attendants may result in distortion or concealment of information.