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Thousands of thinkers, both lay and
medical have have tried to answer the question of why
people kill themselves. To summarize them in three words:
to stop pain. Sometimes this pain is physical, as in
chronic or terminal illness; more often it is emotional, caused by a myriad of problems. In any case,
suicide is not a random or senseless act, but an effective, if extreme,
solution.
A slightly more elaborate list of some reasons people
commit or attempt suicide follows. The categories are arbitrary and overlap
to some degree. However, this is just an outline, and there is no lack
of books that discuss suicidal motivation in much more detail and from many
different perspectives.
Altruistic/Heroic suicide
This is where someone (more-or-less) voluntarily dies
for the good of the group. Examples include the Greeks
at Thermopolae; the Japanese Kamikaze pilots at the
end of WWII; the Buddhist monks and others who, starting
in 1963, burned themselves to death trying to stop the
Viet-Nam war; elderly Inuit (Eskimos) killing themselves
to leave more food for their families; some Communists
who confessed to invented (and often impossible) crimes
during the Purge Trials of the late 1930s and early
1950s. Gandhi's tactic of hunger strikes, called satyagraha
or soul force, would have fallen into this category, had
the British authorities failed to respond to his demands.
Philosophical suicide.
Various philosophical schools, such as stoics and existentialists,
have advocated suicide under some circumstances.
Religious suicide
There is a long history of religious suicide, usually
in the form of martyrdom. This was widespread in the
early years of Christianity and was also commonly seen
in the various "heresies" uprooted before
and during the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and
Inquisition.
More recent examples may include members of the Solar
Temple in Switzerland, France, and Canada, the San Diego Hale-Boppers in March,
1997, the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, and some of the people at
Jonestown, Guyana.
Escape from an unbearable situation
This may be persecution, a terminal illness, or chronic
misery. There is no lack of historical examples:
Epidemics of suicide were frequent among Jews in medieval
Europe; (sometimes they were given a choice between converting to Christianity
and death). Later, both Indian and black slaves in the New World
committed mass suicide to escape brutal treatment. There were large numbers
of suicides during times of pestilence in medieval Europe. More recently, AIDS has generated a similar
response among many of its victims.
There was also a wave of suicides among priests and
their wives around 1075, after Pope Gregory VII imposed celibacy on the clergy,
who had previously been allowed to marry. A significant number of killers
commit suicide.
All of these situations can be readily seen as more-or-less
"unbearable". However, sometimes "unbearable"
means failing an exam, or missing a free throw in the
big game. As George Colt notes, "Most adolescent
depression is caused by a reaction to an event, a poor
grade, the loss of a relationship, rather than a biochemical
imbalance....Feeling blue after not getting into one's
first-choice college is as appropriate as feeling happy
after scoring a winning touchdown. But many adolescents
who experience depression for the first time don't realize
that it won't last forever."
Or, as an anonymous teenager said, "It sounds
crazy, but I think it's true, kids end up committing suicide to get out of taking
their finals."
Excess alcohol and other substance
use
The observed high correspondence between alcohol and
suicide can be explained in several ways, including:
(a) Alcoholism can cause loss of friends, family, and
job, leading to social isolation. (This may be a chicken-and-egg
question; it's equally plausible that family or job
problems induce the excess alcohol use. In its later
stages, the fact and consequences of alcoholism dominate
the picture and are often blamed for everything.); (b) Alcohol and suicide
may both be attempts to deal with depression and misery; (c) Alcohol will
increase the effects of other sedative drugs, frequently used in suicide attempts;
(d) Alcohol may increase impulsive actions.
The significance of the last two points is emphasized
by findings that alcoholic suicide attempters who used highly lethal
methods scored relatively low on suicidal-intent tests. The correlation
between lethal intent and method was found only among non-alcoholics.
Thus, to claim that alcoholism "causes" suicide
is simplistic; while the association of alcohol excess
with suicide is clear, a causal relationship is not.
Both alcoholism and suicide may be responses to the
same pain. A man may drown his sorrows in alcohol for
years before he decides to drown
Romantic suicide
My life is not worth living without him.
This is most celebrated among the young, as in Romeo & Juliet,
but is probably most frequent among people who have lived together for many
years, when one of them dies.
Suicide pacts (dual suicide)
Suicide pacts constitute about 1% of suicides in western
Europe. Most often, their participants are over 51 years
old, except in Japan, where 75% of dual suicides are
"lovers' pacts."
"Anniversary" suicide
This is characterized by use of the same method or
date as a dead loved one, usually a family member. "Imitative"
suicide is similar to anniversary suicide in its focus
on the dead, but uses a different date and method.
"Contagion" suicide
This is where one suicide seems to be the trigger
for others, and includes "cluster" and "copycat"
suicides, most often among adolescents. For example,
on April 8, 1986, Yukiko Okada, 18, jumped to her death
from the seventh floor of her recording studio. She
had recently received an award as Japan's best new singer.
Media attention was intense. 33 young people, one nine
years old, killed themselves in the next 16 days,
21 by jumping from buildings.
There are comparable examples from many parts of the
world. The highly publicized suicide of a Hungarian
beauty queen was followed by a epidemic of suicides
by young women who used the same method.
In the U.S. there have been clusters of suicides, most
often (or most often reported) among high school students,
but not necessarily using identical methods. Even fictional
accounts may be enough, as in a claimed spurt of "Russian
roulette" deaths shortly after the release of the
film The Deer Hunter, with its powerful and nihilistic
Russian roulette scene.
On the other hand, other studies found no linkage between
most newspaper
reports and suicides. Nor do copy-cat suicides occur
consistently. For
example, the 1994 death of Nirvana lead singer Kurt
Cobain was not followed
by a cluster of suicides. In the seven weeks following
his death there were
24 other suicides in the Seattle area, compared with
31 in the corresponding
weeks of the previous year.
An attempt to manipulate others
"If you don't do what I want, I'll kill myself,"
is the basic theme here. However, the word "manipulative"
does not "...imply that a suicide attempt is not
serious....fatal suicide attempts are often made by
people who are hoping to influence or manipulate the
feelings of other people even though they will not be
around to witness the success or failure of their efforts."
Nevertheless, while people sometimes die or are maimed
from their attempts, the intention in this case is to
generate guilt in the other person, and the practitioner
generally intends a non-fatal result.
Seek help or send a distress signal
This is similar to "manipulative" suicide
except that there may be no specific thing being explicitly
sought; it's the expression of too much pain and misery.
This may occur at any age, but it is more frequent in
the young. However, "Parents may minimize or deny
the attempt. One study found that only 38 percent of
treatment referrals after an adolescent attempt were
acted on. Another found only 41 percent of families
came for further therapy following an initial session.
`It's often difficult to get parents to acknowledge
the problem because they are the problem,' says Peter
Saltzman, a child psychiatrist."
"Magical thinking" and
punishment
This is associated with a feeling of power and complete
control. It's a "You'll be sorry when I'm dead"
fantasy.
An illustration is the old Japanese custom of killing
oneself on the doorstep of someone who has caused insult
or humiliation. This is similar to "manipulative
suicide", but a fatal result is intended. It's
sometimes called "aggressive suicide." In
a power struggle, if you can't win you can at least
get in the last word by killing yourself.
Cultural approval
Japanese (like Roman) society has traditionally accepted
or encouraged suicide where matters of honor were concerned.
Thus, the president of a Japanese company whose food
product had accidentally poisoned some people killed
himself as an acknowledgment of responsibility for his
company's mistake.
It's almost unheard-of to find an American CEO who has
voluntarily resigned on account of his company's misdeeds,
let alone one who has committed suicide because of them.
In Japan, 275 company directors killed themselves in
a single year, 1986 (albeit for a variety of reasons).
Lack of an outside source to blame
for one's misery
J.F. Henry and A.F. Short present evidence that when
there is an external cause of one's unhappiness, the
extreme response is rage and homicide; in the absence
of an
external source, the extreme response tends to be depression
and suicide.
Thus, while marriage and children are associated with
a lower suicide rate, they are also correlated with
a higher homicide rate.
Henry and Short also suggest that, as economic quality-of-life
improves, homicide should decrease and suicide increase.
Long-time suicide researcher David Lester found such
a correlation when comparing 43 countries; and also
when comparing American states.
However, national data are contradictory: it's easy
to find countries with low suicide and low homicide
rates (e.g. Great Britain and Greece); or high rates
of both (e.g. Finland and Hungary). Furthermore, recent
multi-national increases in suicide rates are roughly
matched by similar increases in homicide.
In addition, there are high rates of both suicide and
homicide in prison. Most jail (short-term) and prison
(longer-term) suicide rates have been reported between
50 and 200 per 100,000 per year, while the age-matched
male rate in the general population was around 25. Jail
suicide is more frequent than prison suicide.
Still, the Henry-Short hypothesis can be used to explain
some counter-intuitive facts, such as the low suicide
rate among Nazi concentration camp inmates, among African-Americans,
and during wartime; though, as Erwin Stengel observed,
"It is a melancholy thought that marriage and the
family should be such effective substitutes for conditions
of war..."
Other
Most suicides have multiple causes.Consider, for example,
an existentialist with a serious illness who is devastated
by a recent divorce and consequently suffering from
"clinical major depression". He has a prescription
for anti-depressant medication which makes him feel
well enough to go out of the house. He goes to a bar,
gets drunk, comes back and shoots himself with a loaded
gun he kept in the bedroom.
None of his neighbors responds to the noise and he
bleeds to death. What "caused" his death:
physical illness, philosophy, divorce, depression, medication,
alcohol, availability of a gun, or social isolation?
Or, perhaps, none of the above: from a slightly different
perspective, none of these factors caused the suicide;
rather it is the pain associated with them (along with
the unwillingness to bear it) that precipitates suicide.
"Reasons" cited for suicide change with the
times. Dr. Forbes Winslow wrote in 1840 that the increase
in suicide was due to socialism, and particularly, Tom
Paine's Age of Reason. Additional causes he cited were
"atmospheric moisture" and masturbation, "a
certain secret vice which, we are afraid, is practised
to an enormous extent in our public schools." He
recommended cold showers and laxatives !!!!
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