What is an Equivocal Death?
• A woman says her boyfriend went for a walk in a state park and then he was found dead in the ocean. • A king from centuries past dies from an undocumented cause. • The death of an eccentric billionaire raises questions. • A boy shoots his mother and claims it was an accident. These cases, as different as they are, have something in common: the need for a psychological autopsy to get at the truth. Also called psychiatric autopsy, retrospective death assessment, reconstructive evaluation, and equivocal death analysis, the term refers to a specific method used for examining a persons lifespecifically, the life of a dead person. In death certifications, there are three important matters: the cause, mechanism and mode or manner of death. The cause is an instrument or physical agent used to bring about death (a bullet, for example), the mechanism is the pathological agent in the body that resulted in the death (excessive bleeding), and the manner of death, according to the NASH classificat
