ABSTRACT
Clinical experience adds important dimensions for which most law enforcement investigators have not been trained. Psychological insight can assist with forming the type of questions needed for the decedent's associates and an in-depth analysis of motives. Clinical awareness also reminds investigators to watch for behavioural signals in people who might have staged or altered a death scene. The approach to death investigation that includes the most concentrated collection and analysis of psychological material about a decedent is a psychological autopsy. The primary goal of the Suicide Prevention Center (SPC) clinicians was to save lives. Acquiring accurate data was a challenge, but the SPC associates surveyed many local physicians, gathered hospital charts for suicidal patients, and queried the coroner's staff about their suicide cases. Edwin Shneidman and Norman Faberow classified suicidal acts as intentional (premediated), subintentional, and unintentional. Shneidman proposed that mental health experts who dealt with suicidal people should fully explore the method, motive, and degree of desire to die.
