Suicides & Others

For every one of the 20,000 U.S. citizens who commit suicide each year, five more try it but fail, and dozens threaten it. In an effort to pinpoint the characteristics of suicidal types, two psychologists analyzed the records and personalities of 64 men--half with records of suicidal impulse, half with none--who had been in the Veterans Administration Neuropsychiatric Hospital at Los Angeles. Key findings by Drs. Edwin S. Shneidman and Norman L. Farberow in Public Health Reports:

P: It is practically impossible to pick out the potential suicide from the details of his psychiatric case history, no matter how heavily laced it may be with stress and trauma.

P: Although a threat of suicide does not necessarily mean that the individual will go through with it, the converse is not true--nearly everybody who commits suicide has given forewarning of it.

P: The only emotional illnesses that distinguish the suicidal and possibly suicidal groups from others are extremely severe depression and far-gone delusions of persecution.

P: As between those who actually attempt suicide and those who only threaten it, the latter are actually the more "disturbed," in the psychiatric sense, by guilt, aggression, irritability and agitation. Those who try it may be more withdrawn, but it often seems that the mere attempt has helped to get them temporarily back on an even emotional keel.

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