Suicide is a major public health problem. Although suicide statistics have always been difficult to determine, there is no doubt that deaths caused by this psychiatric challenge are similar to the ones caused by homicide or road traffic injuries. The presence of a personality disorder has often been related to suicide.

In the present work we analyze the presence of personality disorders (PD) in suicide victims and controls, in order to determinate such axis II disorders were more common in the suicide group.

We compared the results of two samples (271 suicides and 142 sudden-death controls), which were studied using a psychological autopsy. Personality disorders were diagnosed using the SCID-II. Data were analyzed using the SPSS software 19.0 version.

Although age differences were found between both groups, they were almost not statistically significant (p=0’049). There were no differences in gender results (p=0’289). The prevalence of PD was statistically significant (p=0’00) among the suicide group. When we studied the suicide group, we found that the existence of previous suicide attempts and PD was statistically significant also.

Although PD were more frequent among suicide victims, we found that PD also had more previous suicide attempts. Therefore, the presence of more PD among suicide victims may be due to the higher rates of suicide attempts