Despite these limitations, data from the NVDRS have numerous strengths. First, the NVDRS data set provides BAC information for most suicide decedents. Second, although the NVDRS states are not necessarily representative of the United States, the decedents in these 17 states are similar to the demographic profile for the country as a whole in terms of gender, age, ethnic/racial composition, urban/rural characteristics, and national suicide mortality rates [8]. Finally, collection of postmortem data is particularly challenging when states have decentralized medicolegal death investigation systems rather than a centralized medical examiner system. It is worth noting that 69% of the states participating in the NVDRS have a centralized medical examiner system compared with only 15% of non-NVDRS states [31].
