Cause, Mechanism, and Manner of Death

When a death occurs, a physician or medical examiner must fill out a death certificate. In order to properly complete this document, they must figure out three things: cause, mechanism, and manner of death. There is often confusion about which is which. Cause of death is the disease or injury that produces the physiological disruption inside the body resulting in death. An example of a cause of death is a gunshot wound to the chest. Mechanism of death is the physiological derangement due to the cause that results in the death. An example of a mechanism of death due to a gunshot wound described above is exsanguination (extreme blood loss). Last but not least, manner of death is how the death came about.

Manner of death can be classified in five ways:

1) Natural
2) Accident
3) Suicide
4) Homicide
5) Undetermined

A natural death occurs as a result of aging or due to illness or disease. An accidental death occurs when an injury or poisoning causes death but it appears to be unintentional. There is no evidence supporting the idea that the poisoning or injury occurred with intent to harm or cause death. A suicide results from an injury or poisoning which occurs as the result of deliberate, self-inflicted act that is committed to harm or cause death of one's self. A homicide occurs when death is caused by another person. Undetermined is used as a classification when the information pointing toward one manner of death is no more compelling than any others.

These characteristics of deaths are helpful for various reasons. The family of the deceased will have peace of mind if they know what exactly caused the death of their loved one. Insurance claims may not be accepted if the manner of death was a suicide. Also, many legal proceedings focus their attention to these characteristics during the trial and prosecution of murderers. This information is necessary to compile statistics for monitoring health and crime in the population. As you can see, characteristics of death are very important details to be aware of under several different circumstances.

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