PHENOTYPIC CHARACTERISTICS OF PERSONS PRONE TO SUICIDE

Suicidal behavior is one of the most pressing challenges in modern medicine and society. Among all factors, phenotypic characteristics play an important role and can serve as markers of susceptibility to suicide. The aim of study – to determine the anthropometric characteristics of individuals with suicidal behaviour. Materials and methods. The object of the study is anthropometric parameters obtained from 209 people, namely: 138 male and 21 female persons aged 18 to 59 years who committed suicide, and 50 persons of the control group (CG) consisting of 25 men and 25 women. Results. According to the results of the comparative analysis by the non-parametric Mann-Whitney test, the values of such anthropometric indicators of female suicide victims as foot length (U=22,000; p=0. 013), head circumference (U=0.500; p=0.000), longitudinal head diameter (U=15.000; p=0.005), transverse head diameter (U=2.000; p=0.000), facial height (U=8.000; p=0. 001), zygomatic diameter (U=2,000; p=0.000), midface width (U=5,000; p=0.001), nose height (U=30,000; p=0.042) are statistically significantly different from those of the CG women. Indicators such as palm length (U=39,000; p=0.099), upper face width (U=38,000; p=0.100) in female suicides differ from those in the CG only at the level of statistical tendency. The results of the corresponding comparative analysis of anthropometric indicators of male suicides showed that arm length (U=130.500; p=0.004), leg length (U=79.000; p=0.000), head circumference (U=124.000; p=0.000), longitudinal head diameter (U=86.000; p=0. 000), transverse head diameter (U=121,500; p=0.004), zygomatic diameter (U=2,000; p=0.000), midface width (U=69,000; p=0.000) and bigonal width (U=54,500; p=0.000) are statistically significantly different from those of CG men. Such indicators as facial height (U=177,500; p=0.085) and nose height (U=168,000; p=0.054) in male suicides differ from those in the control group only at the level of statistical tendency. Conclusions. Thus, the study found that there are statistically significant differences between the phenotypic (in this case, anthropometric) characteristics of individuals with suicidal tendencies and those in the control group. Moreover, this dependence exists at the level of gender groups.