What is a psychological autopsy?

In a figurative sense, reviving a person who has committed suicide is possible. There are cases of death in which the motives or the evidence are not very clear, so it is not known with certainty if it is a suicide or a homicide.

Psychological autopsy is carried out to clarify doubtful deaths. We will talk about her in this article.

• Related article: "Forensic psychology: definition and functions of the forensic psychologist"

What is a psychological autopsy?

The psychological autopsy is a process that involves a multidisciplinary work that brings together doctors, criminologists and psychologists. It is an important technique used within the field of forensic psychology. It is useful to determine causes or solve cases of suicide, and the development of this technique began by addressing the need to define the cause of death in doubtful cases and in those for which the medical autopsy has no evidence enough.

The participation of the Psychology area is essential for the process of analysis and decoding of clues. On many occasions, the fact that a death with doubtful causes is studied from a single perspective or profession is not enough. Needed

a team made up of different health professionals so that each one analyzes the case from his point of view and thus a more accurate and complete result can be reached.

The intervention of the forensic psychologist in the clarification of the case is essential, since when he goes to the crime scene, he can begin to generate an outline of the subject's personality just by looking at the organization of his space, furniture, ornaments, etc. In order to achieve this, Schneidman, author of the technique, proposed three fundamental categories to investigate and analyze: the what, the how and the why.

One of the main functions of the psychologist is interpret the signs and clues within a crime scene. In addition to the medical autopsy, it is required to have access to the clinical history, medical and legal files, notes, letters, diary or any other something that can provide more information about how the subject felt, the thoughts he had before his death, his own ideas and learned. The process starts from the same place of the events, in which not only objective traces can be raised, but also psychological traces that are imprinted in the places where the victim was and in the people who interacted with her.

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The MAPI technique

Within the psychological autopsy, the most used and most effective technique is MAPI, whose acronyms mean the different areas of the individual in question that will be studied.

1. Mental

It refers to the intelligence, memory, attention, judgment and cognition. With this there may be reference to the cognitive skills and abilities.

2. Emotional or affective

Analyze the development and changes in mood. It is essential because it is what study the mental state of the subject, if there was any predisposition to behaviors or suicidal thoughts or in itself that there were recurrent depressive episodes or the presence of some other disorder.

3. Psychosocial

It focuses on the background, since he was born, how was his childhood, adolescence, etc. In the same way, it inquires about relationships with people from not close circles and important changes throughout their lives.

4. Interpersonal

Focuses on relationships with family and friends. The importance of this is that people who were close to the deceased can be contacted and contribute to the investigation process. However... How should the interviews with the friends and relatives of the deceased be carried out? Let's see.

Interviews with people close to the deceased

Carry out interviews with people close to the deceased it is the final step of this tool so widely used in psychological autopsy. Doing this has two main purposes:

1. Learn more about the victim, their personality, character, daily activities and everything of which there is no written record or physical evidence.
2. It serves as a therapeutic way for close friends and family, since many times they express their feelings and thoughts about the situation.

It is established that the optimal time to carry them out is 1 to 6 months after the event. Doing them before can be counterproductive because the feelings and emotions are still very recent and can affect the interpretation and the way they remember the facts. And doing them after the stipulated time, can cause memories to no longer be clear and people try to redo them or fill in the blanks they have with incorrect or false facts or elements.

The psychological autopsy is a new tool, barely developed in the 21st century, but in a short time it has proven useful in many cases in which medicine had not been sufficient to determine the causes of death. Any process related to human beings, up to death, is extremely complex due to the nature of man. This is why it needs to be approached from a broad and multidisciplinary perspective.