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To be able to prevent suicides. The exact magnitude of suicides must be known in order to prevent them. There is evidence that data provided on the number of suicides by the Spanish Statistical Office (Instituto Nacional de Estadística [INE]) differs from that identified by forensic pathologists. This paper aims to determine whether the INE data are the same as those recorded by the agencies responsible for conducting autopsies in Spain (IML), and to calculate the number of missing cases.

IML was requested to provide the number of suicides in a 5-year period (2006–2010) and this was compared with those offered by INE in its site. A new rate of suicides per 100,000 was obtained and used to calculate the number of suicides in Spain.

For every year of the studied period, the number of suicides reported by the INE was lower than that obtained directly from the IML. Using the …