Causes of Suicide

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Causes of Suicide

This essay examines the reasons why a person of good physical health decides to terminate their own life. It does not consider euthanasia, assisted or forced suicide. Compared to most aspects of psychological health it is limited in scope for research – no “follow-up” can be performed, if the act is completed, and no ethical panel would approve experiments to demonstrate a causal link. Suicide has “no one single cause or stressor” according to the Lancet 2011.

Before elaborating on what causes suicide it should be understood what we mean by cause. The Oxford English Dictionary defines cause as “a person or thing that gives rise to an action, phenomenon or condition.” This essay will in part examine the methods employed by suicidal patients though this is secondary to whatever caused them to make this decision. The essay will consider the epidemiology of suicide (also regarding suicide clustering) followed by the potential genetic risk factors. This will be followed by the psychological factors such as depressive disorders, and finally the environmental risk factors such as low socioeconomic status and substance abuse.

Another complication in analysing causes of suicide is the variation between cases. Some will be clearly planned events, with finances and family situations adjusted beforehand, notes written. Others will be on the spur of the moment, with difficulty establishing whether it was deliberate or accidental. Some will be violent, immediate acts whilst others will be drawn out affairs with low lethality (dependent on availablilty of help). Most importantly, some individuals will not succeed – or chillingly, not at first. One of the greatest predictors for completed suicide is attempted previous suici...

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Marusic,A. (2008) Editorial: Does Suicide Know the Points of the Compass?OpenUrlCiteView

McGirr,Alexander (2007) An examination of DSM-IV depressive symptoms and risk for suicide completion in major depressive disorder: A psychological autopsy studyOpenUrlCiteView

Mesoudi (2009) The Cultural Dynamics of Copycat SuicideOpenUrlCiteView

Nordentoft,Merete (2011) Absolute Risk of Suicide After First Hospital Contact in Mental DisorderOpenUrlCiteView

Ortigo, Westen, and Bradley (2009) Personality subtypes of suicidal adultsOpenUrlCiteView

Pompili,M. (2009) Substance abuse, temperament and suicide risk: Evidence from a case-control study.OpenUrlCiteView

Roy,Alec (2011) Resilience mitigates the suicide risk associated with childhood traumaOpenUrlCiteView

Roy,Alec (2009) Gene-Environment Interaction and Suicidal BehaviorOpenUrlCiteView

Zai CC. (2011) Brain-deriv

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