This is the case of a 41-year-old male with a two-year history of depressed mood, for which he had refused psychological treatment. He committed suicide that resulted in complete decapitation.
Suicidal hanging is generally associated with soft-tissue injuries only, and osseous lesions of the cervical spine are very unusual. Decapitation represents the most extreme type of those cervical injuries associated with hanging. It seems of excessive rarity whatever the circumstances of hanging – judicial or suicidal. In suicidal hangings, the occurrence of a decapitation is always the consequence of a drop of several meters, generally associated with a relatively thin ligature of poor stretchability.
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