Characteristics of Fatal Destructive Behaviour in an Urban Area

In the Inner North London Coroner’s district, deaths resulting from self-destructive behaviour in the period 1971-1980 have been examined to discover the realtionship between “predisposing factors” to such behaviour & previous psychiatric history. In patients under treatment for a psychiatric illness a “predisposing factor” existed far less often than in the group of persons not suffering from a treated psychiatric illness.