Psychiatric Morbidity in a Sample of a London Coroner's Open Verdicts

Abstract

A coroner concludes an open verdict if there is insufficient evidence to record any of the other verdicts, namely, suicide, accident, homicide and natural causes (Purchase and Wollaston, 1957). In practice, open verdicts are most often used when the coroner cannot decide between suicide and accident. They are therefore of interest to doctors, especially family doctors and psychiatrists, and to social scientists, because suicides may be so classified for want of evidence of intent to die. Thus the study of open verdicts may increase knowledge about suicide itself and the accuracy of suicide statistics. To further these aims we describe, for the first time, a consecutive series of such deaths which occurred in a London coroner's district. The psychiatric aspects have been given special emphasis.