Introduction:

Suicide is a current health problem constituting the third leading cause of death worldwide among 11-18-year-old teenagers. In Cuba it is the fourth leading cause of death in the 10-19 years age group. The methods used to commit a suicide attempt or suicide depend on their availability, the person's access to a given method, and family antecedents of the use of one method or another, among others.

Objective:

Identify the methods used by teenagers to commit attempted or actual suicide.

Methods:

A retrospective descriptive study was conducted as part of the various tasks included in the research project "Strategy to prevent suicidal behavior among teenagers from selected provinces", which was developed for ten years.

Results:

The methods used in suicide attempts were the intake of psycholeptics and toxic substances, whereas the methods used for actual suicide were mainly hanging and burning. The most common substances were herbicides and topical skin lotions.

Conclusions:

The methods most frequently used were the intake of psycholeptics and toxic substances for suicide attempts and hanging and burning for suicide. This could be associated to the availability of resources required to commit the act.

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