Background and purpose: Intentional drug poisoning is one of the most common methods of suicide attempt. The purpose of this study was to determine the demographic characteristics of suicide attempters and identifying the pattern of intentional drug poisoning.

Materials and methods: We conducted a descriptive-analytical study in which data was collected from the medical records of suicide attempts by drug poisoning in 5Azar Hospital in Gorgan, Iran, 2008-2015. Data was analyzed by Stata V.11 and Pearson's Chi-squared test.

Results: During these seven years, 442 cases of suicide attempts by drug poisoning were recorded in which there were 244 (55.2%) females and 229 individuals (51.8%) aged 20–29 years. Their mean age was 24.54 ± 8.14 and the majority (79%) lived in urban areas. Also, 224 (55.2%) patients were single and 248 (56.1%) had high school education. Poisoning occurred mostly in summer (28.7%). Among the pharmaceuticals, sedative-hypnotic drugs especially benzodiazepines were used more often (47.5%) followed by narcotic drugs (26.5%) and antidepressants (17.4%). Death occurred in three patients (0.68%) died. Family quarrel was found to be the main cause of suicide attempts (46.8%).

Conclusion: Sedative-hypnotic drugs especially benzodiazepines were the most common agents used in intentional drug poisoning that were seen most commonly among younger individuals, single persons and people with family quarrel.