PALMA
PALMA'S Son Dureta hospital has the highest rate in Spain of attendance to people who have tried to commit suicide using drugs which can be bought over-the-counter at chemist shops.
A spokesman for the Toxicology Unit at Son Dureta said yesterday that it believed that 40 percent of the 1'008 overdose cases it dealt with last year were in actual fact suicide attempts. It also pointed to statistics which showed that the means by which foreign residents chose to end it all were different from those elected by local people - the former choose paracetamol and the latter, tranquilisers.
The report on the use of pharmaceutical drugs to commit suicide is one of the most significant aspects to emerge from the first year of the Toxicology units operations. Findings were presented yesterday at a meeting of Emergency treatment co-ordinators at the hospital. The report also showed that alcohol abuse was the chief reason for people being taken to the unit with nearly 600 cases in 2007. Of this figure, 60 percent had combined alcohol with other substances. Cases of overdose on pharmaceutical drugs took second place, followed in third by illegal drug taking.
Dr. Barceló explained yesterday that the vast majority of patients at the Toxicology clinic at Son Dureta in 2007 who had overdosed on tranquilisers were people with mental disorders who poison themselves using their own medicines which can be a complicated affair as they are difficult to treat in the case of massive consumption. Such cases, said Barceló are voluntary suicides who attempt to intensify the effects of their overdose by plying themselves with alcohol at the same time.