Establishing a motif for suicide

Publikacja recenzowana / Peer-reviewed publicationPsychological profiling and analysing the life situation of a person who committed suicide are only some of the tasks that forensic psychology deals with. Its purpose is to establish the potential motives behind the suicide. The above mentioned activities are taken if there is reasonable doubt whether the death of a given person resulted from suicide or murder, but also when post-mortem examination and crime scene investigation clearly indicate suicide but the motives of the perpetrator are not known. It is of vital importance to try and reconstruct the mental condition and the motivational process of the suicide especially if it is suspected that making an attempt on one’s life was caused by the detrimental effect of other people or institutions. This article presents several case studies of suicidal deaths of people from so-called uniformed services, where opinions of psychological experts have been compiled for the purposes of the system of justice. The study also shows the course of action of a psychologist in such situations, with special emphasis placed on the problems of occupational stress, mobbing and other factors connected with their job e.g. in the army or in the prison system, which can unfavourably infl uence a person’s mental welfare