Suicide最新文献

Using the concept that homicide and suicide are complex sociopsychiatric phenomena clearly influenced by cultural norms and values that define which behaviors are viewed as deviant, the investigators constructed a small sample model to determine relevant qualitative attributes of public opinion. A stratified factorial sample of 258 subjects distributed among eight large cities throughout the world was selected for interviewing. The 2,603 resulting statements were then subjected to content analysis and categorization. Results indicated that people in cities, regardless of location, are most concerned about crimes of violence, especially homicide, and those against property. Other kinds of life-threatening offenses such as arson, war, and suicide are seldom seen as important "crimes." Many people endorse a problem-solving approach to dealing with crime and criminals, but a reservior of traditional, punitive attitudes clearly remains among the less educated, lower socioeconomic classes. A commonality of many attitudes in these various urban centers does suggest that modern communication techniques may well have a modulating effect on culture-bound orientations toward crime.

This limited study based on publicly available statistics provides strong support for the belief that underreporting of suicide in Canada may be considerable. If this is true, it immediately justifies a greatly increased effort to refine and upgrade the ascertainment procedures so as to make the recorded statistics of more value in assessing the size and epidemiological relationships of the public health problem. From this study has also emerged the idea that, if any given community, there may exist some "general tendency" to violent and unrestrained behavior-a tendency that influences the rates for both suicide and comparable accidents in a similar direction. To explore this and similar concepts adequately requires greater refinement and reliability of the basic statistical data.

One hundred patients who in 1963 had attempted self-poisoning and were subsequently admitted to the intoxication ward of a psychiatric hospital were studied twice: immediately after the attempted self-poisoning and 8 years after the attempt. It was found that within the follow-up period a total of nine patients had died, four of whom had committed suicide. The risk of suicide per years is .5%. According to the literature the range of the annual suicide risk is .9% to 2.5%.

This paper investigates whether there is an association between sexual imagery and violent imagery in stories produced in response to ambiguous Thematic Apperception Test stimuli. In addition, two commonsense assumptions about sex and violence are examined: (a) do men have more sexual imagery than women? and (b) assuming men are more aggressive than women, do they produce fantasies with more violent themes? Thematic Apperception Test protocols administered to 80 college students as part of a study conducted at Syracuse University in the late 1950s were examined using two scoring systems--one for sexual imagery and one for violent imagery. An association between sex and violence was found for men only. The conventional wisdom that all men ever think about is sex was undermined by the finding that men and women do not differ in the production of sexual imagery. In terms of production of violent imagery, men and women also do not differ. The fact that females are less aggressive than men is overt behavior may be a function of social and cultural forces which operate differentially on men and women.

A survey of community attitudes and beliefs concerning suicidal behavior is reported, in which women from two suburbs differing widely in their rates of hospital treated self-poisoning and self-injury were interviewed. Sympathetic attitudes to suicidal behavior and to those who engage in it were significantly more prevalent in the low-risk area. Community beliefs regarding lethality, etiology, and ability to distinguish suicide and "attempted suicide" are reported, and the relationship of these beliefs to attitudes is discussed.

This paper explores the epidemiology and impact (both short- and long-term) of acute life-threatening experiences among a youthful population. Interviews were conducted with 649 individuals between the ages of 13 and 30. Thirty-four percent of these respondents reported a total of 290 analyzable, subjectively perceived death confrontation experiences. An estimate of over 2 1/2 million living ex-suicide attempters, under age 30, was derived, and suicide was found to be a significantly unique form of death confrontation. In contrast to earlier work, panic and fear were found significantly to describe the majority of impacts reported, while avoidance appears to be the modal long-term effect. Differential impacts and effects are reported by mode of event, and results are discussed in relation to their impact for crisis counseling.

This study compares mortality risk among suicide attempters, psychiatric patients, and members of the general population using demographic data from the Monroe County (New York) Psychiatric Case Register for 1960 to 1970. During this 11-year period there were 172 deaths reported for the suicide attempt group, 6, 108 for the Psychiatric Register population, and 58,542 for the general population. The relative risk of death from all causes of the suicide attempt group was nearly twice that of the general population and slightly higher than that of the psychiatric group. High risks of mortality were differentially associated with several demographic and treatment variables. Implications for predictive criteria and interventive strategies are discussed.

In a sample of 87 hospitalized suicide attempters, a hopelessness scale was found to be significantly better than a depression inventory as an indicator of suicidal risk. Hopelessness also correlated better than depression with self-ratings of the attenuation of the desire to go on living.