- For other uses, see Suicide (disambiguation).
Suicide (from Latin sui caedere, to kill oneself) is the act of willfully ending one's own life; it is sometimes a noun for one who has committed or attempted the act.
Suicide is viewed in varying ways among the cultures, religions, legal and social systems of the world. It is considered a sin or immoral act in many religions, and a crime in some jurisdictions. On the other hand, some cultures have viewed it as an honorable way to exit certain shameful or hopeless situations. Persons attempting or dying by suicide sometimes leave a suicide note.
According to stricter definitions of suicide, to be considered suicide, the death must be a central component and intention of the act, not just a certain consequence; hence, suicide bombing is considered a kind of bombing rather than a kind of suicide, and martyrdom usually escapes religious or legal proscription. Generally, there are only legal consequences when there is death and proof of intent. However, not all follow this narrower definition. Certainly, a suicide bomber knows that death will be part of the outcome of his or her actions.
Suicidal thoughts as a medical emergency
Psychiatric emergency
Severe suicidal thoughts are generally considered to be a medical emergency. People seriously considering suicide are generally advised to seek help right away. This is especially true if the means (weapons, drugs, or other methods) are available, or if a detailed plan is in place.
Current medical advice is that people who are seriously considering suicide should go to the nearest emergency room, or call the emergency services. Severe suicidal ideation, according to this advice, is a condition that requires immediate emergency medical treatment. If depression is a major factor, then treatment usually leads to the disappearance of suicidal thoughts.
First aid
If a bystander is confronted with a situation where someone threatens to commit suicide, the best thing to do is to seek medical attention. It is best to contact the doctor who treats the patient if possible. However, outside of the doctor's normal office hours most physicians recommend contacting the emergency services at a hospital.
If possible the patient should go to the emergency room and ask to be admitted to the mental health ward on a voluntary basis. It is better to voluntarily seek treatment rather than being involuntarily committed, which would require intervention by the legal system.
It is also a good idea to involve law enforcement if the person seems determined to make a suicide attempt. While the police do not usually have the authority to stop the suicide attempt itself, in the US and some other jurisdictions killing oneself is technically homicide, and undoubtedly disruptance of public order, justifying their intervention. In most cases law enforcement does have the authority to have people involuntarily committed to mental health wards. Usually a court order is required, but if an officer feels the person is in immediate danger they can order an involuntary commitment without waiting for a court order. Such commitments are for a certain amount of time, such as 72 hours – which is long enough for a doctor to see the patient and make an evaluation. After this initial period, a hearing is held in which a judge can decide to order the person released or can extend the treatment time further. Afterwards, the court is kept informed of the person's condition and can release the person when they feel the time is right to do so.
Treatment
Treatment is directed at the underlying causes of suicidal thinking. Clinical depression is the major treatable cause, with alcohol or drug abuse being the next major categories. Other psychiatric disorders associated with suicidal thinking include bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, Borderline personality disorder, Gender identity disorder and anorexia nervosa. Suicidal thoughts provoked by crises will generally settle with time and counselling. For a person with strong or at least definitive family or community ties, urgently providing information about who else would be hurt and the loss that they would feel can sometimes be effective. For a person suffering poor self-esteem, citing valuable and productive aspects of their life can be helpful. Sometimes provoking simple curiosity about the victim's own future can be helpful.
During the acute phase, the safety of the person is one of the prime factors considered by doctors, and this can lead to admission to a psychiatric ward or even involuntary commitment.
Suicide prevention
Various suicide prevention strategies have been used:
- Promoting mental resilience through optimism and connectedness.
- Education about suicide, including risk factors, warning signs and the availability of help.
- Increasing the proficiency of health and welfare services at responding to people in need. This includes better training for health professionals and employing crisis counselling organizations.
- Reducing domestic violence and substance abuse are long-term strategies to reduce many mental health problems.
- Reducing access to convenient means of suicide (e.g., toxic substances, handguns).
- Reducing the quantity of dosages supplied in packages of non-prescription medicines e.g., aspirin.
- Interventions targeted at high-risk groups.
- Research.
- There are several major research journals devoted to suicide prevention and intervention research:
Main Article: Epidemiology and Methodology of Suicide.
It is probable that the incidence of suicide is widely under-reported due to both religious and social pressures, and possibly completely unreported in some areas. Nevertheless, from the known suicides, certain trends are apparent. However, since the data is skewed, attempts to compare suicide rates between nations is statistically unwise.
Attempted suicide and parasuicide
Nearly half of suicides are preceded by an attempt at suicide that does not end in death. Those with a history of such attempts are 100 times more likely to eventually end their own lives than those without.
A suicidal act that does not end in death is commonly called a "suicide attempt" or a "suicidal gesture". In the technical literature people prefer the use of the neologism parasuicide, or describe such acts as "deliberate self-harm" (DSH) – both of these terms avoid the question of the intent of the action. Those who attempt DSH are, as a group, quite different from those who actually die from suicide. DSH is far more common, and the vast majority are females aged under 35. They are rarely physically ill and while psychological factors are highly significant, they are rarely clinically ill and severe depression is uncommon. Social issues are key – DSH is most common among those living in overcrowded conditions, in conflict with their families, with disrupted childhoods and history of drinking, criminal behavior and violence. Individuals under these stresses become anxious and depressed and then, usually in reaction to a single particular crisis, they attempt to harm themselves. The motivation may be a desire for relief from emotional pain or to communicate feelings, although the motivation will often be complex and confused. DSH may also result from an inner conflict between the desire to end life and to continue living.
Suicide in history
Main Article: History of Suicide.
Among the famous people who have died by suicide are Boudicca, Cleopatra VII of Egypt, Hannibal, Nero, Virginia Woolf, Mark Antony, Ernest Hemingway, Alan Turing, Sylvia Plath, Marina Tsvetaeva, Yukio Mishima, Kurt Cobain, Hunter S. Thompson, Ludwig Boltzmann, Ian Curtis, Adolf Hitler and Vincent van Gogh.
Legal, Cultural, and Religious Views of Suicide
Main Article: Legal, religious, and cultural views on suicide.
There are a number of different views on suicide. These views include legal, cultural, and religious views on suicide. While some of these views approve of suicide, others are equally against suicide.
Arguments against suicide
It is important to note that the liberal view above is not associated with classical liberalism; John Stuart Mill, for instance, argued in his influential essay On Liberty that since the sine qua non of liberty is the power of the individual to make choices, any choice that one might make that would deprive him or her of the ability to make further choices should be prevented. Thus, for Mill, selling oneself into slavery or killing oneself should be prevented, in order to avoid precluding the ability to make further choices. Concerning these matters, Mill writes in On Liberty:
- Not only persons are not held to engagements which violate the rights of third parties, but it is sometimes considered a sufficient reason for releasing them from an engagement, that it is injurious to themselves. In this and most other civilized countries, for example, an engagement by which a person should sell himself, or allow himself to be sold, as a slave, would be null and void; neither enforced by law nor by opinion. The ground for thus limiting his power of voluntarily disposing of his own lot in life, is apparent, and is very clearly seen in this extreme case. The reason for not interfering, unless for the sake of others, with a person's voluntary acts, is consideration for his liberty. His voluntary choice is evidence that what he so chooses is desirable, or at the least endurable, to him, and his good is on the whole best provided for by allowing him to take his own means of pursuing it. But by selling himself for a slave, he abdicates his liberty; he foregoes any future use of it, beyond that single act. He therefore defeats, in his own case, the very purpose which is the justification of allowing him to dispose of himself. He is no longer free; but is thenceforth in a position which has no longer the presumption in its favor, that would be afforded by his voluntarily remaining in it. The principle of freedom cannot require that he should be free not to be free. It is not freedom, to be allowed to alienate his freedom.
Philosophical thinking in the 19th and 20th century has led, in some cases, beyond thinking in terms of pro-choice, to the point that suicide is no longer a last resort, or even something that one must justify, but something that one must justify not doing. Existentialist thinking essentially begins with the premise that life is objectively meaningless, and then poses the question "why not just kill oneself?". It then proceeds to answer this by suggesting the individual has the power to give personal meaning. Nihilist thinkers reject this emphasis on the power of the individual to create meaning, and acknowledge that all things are equally meaningless, including suicide.
Combination of killing and suicide
The combination of killing or murder and suicide can take various forms, including:
See also
Further reading
- Bongar, B. The Suicidal Patient: Clinical and Legal Standards of Care. Washington, D.C.: APA. 2002. ISBN: 1557987610
- Frederick, C. J. Trends in Mental Health: Self-destructive Behavior Among Younger Age Groups. Rockville, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse. 1976. ED 132 782.
- Lipsitz, J. S. MAKING IT THE HARD WAY: ADOLESCENTS IN THE 1980S. Testimony presented to the Crisis Intervention Task Force of the House Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families. 1983. ED 248 002.
- McBrien, R. J. "Are You Thinking of Killing Yourself? Confronting Suicidal Thoughts." SCHOOL COUNSELOR 31 (1983): 75–82.
- Ray, L. Y. "Adolescent Suicide." PERSONNEL AND GUIDANCE JOURNAL 62 (1983): 131–35.
- Rosenkrantz, A. L. "A Note on Adolescent Suicide: Incidence, Dynamics and Some Suggestions for Treatment." ADOLESCENCE 13 (l978): 209–14.
- Sheppard, Gordon, "HA! A Self-Murder Mystery". (2003) (Fiction) Documentary novel based on the suicide of Québec Novelist Hubert Aquin and other notable suicides in literary history.
- Smith, R. M. ADOLESCENT SUICIDE AND INTERVENTION IN PERSPECTIVE. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations, Boston, MA, August, 1979. ED 184 017.
- Stone, Geo: Suicide and Attempted Suicide. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001. ISBN 0-7867-0940-5
- Suicide Among School Age Youth. Albany, NY: The State Education Department of the University of the State of New York, 1984. ED 253 819.
- SUICIDE AND ATTEMPTED SUICIDE IN YOUNG PEOPLE. REPORT ON A CONFERENCE. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization, 1974. ED 162 204.
- TEENAGERS IN CRISIS: ISSUES AND PROGRAMS. HEARING BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN, YOUTH, AND FAMILIES. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES NINETY-EIGHTH CONGRESS, FIRST SESSION. Washington, DC: Congress of the U. S., October, 1983. ED 248 445.
External links
Crisis Lines
If you are in suicidal crisis, call a crisis line and talk to someone about it. In the United States, you can call 1-800-SUICIDE to reach a trained counselor near you.
Support groups
Other links
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