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Book Review-Suicide: The Social Causes of Self-Destruction

Suicide is the most destructive thing that most people will encounter.  It can destroy families.  But It can save others.  It can also be a powerful statement that can be used to transform the world.  The question that Suicide: The Social Causes of Self-Destruction aims to answer are the motivations and desired outcomes people have for ending their lives.

Cry for Help

Attempted suicide is a cry for help.  Signals sent about suicidal ideation are a cry for help.  The question is what is it a cry for help for?  In other words, what is it that the person is seeking to change?  Are they seeking to change their personal pain, which Shneidman calls “psychache?”  (See The Suicidal Mind.)  Are they instead trying to right a moral injustice that they are partially or completely impacted by?

When Mohamed Bouazizi died by self-immolation (setting himself on fire), he did so out of both personal despair as well as a strong statement about a corrupt and harmful system.  Bouazizi was successful in his societal quest, setting off a series of protests and political changes across multiple countries that would be called Arab Spring.

Self-Control via Punishment

Another direction that we can see suicide come from is the results of self-control through punishment.  Some people have a degree of self-hate and frustration that causes them to create punishments for themselves like they might do to others.  It may be depriving themselves of their favorite activity, assigning themselves more work, or other attempts to internally implement the kind of social controls for their behaviors (and thoughts) that they feel are lacking.

The problem with this approach is that they’re forced to be their own enforcer.  This means they’re left with no one – not even themselves – to turn to for comfort or to support them while they’re struggling.  Tragically, some of those struggles end in suicide.

Economic Value

Society today – and perhaps in the past as well – has valued what we do more than what we are.  Though we’re called “human beings,” most people struggle to just be.  We’ve got a strong bias towards action that leads people to believe that they should be called “human doings.”  (See Change, Antifragile, and Cognition and Suicide for more.)  It’s no surprise then that when people retire, become unemployed, or become disabled, their risk of suicide spikes.

It’s unlikely that we’ll be able to change society to value people on their intrinsic merit rather than what they can or will do.

Falling Behind

Since the 1940s, the phrase “Keeping up with the Joneses” has entered popular use.  It refers to our desire to acquire the same material positions as our neighbors.  Daniel Kahneman’s work shows that our measure of doing well isn’t driven in abstract terms but rather by the degree to which we’re seen as doing better than our neighbors.  (See Thinking, Fast and Slow.)  Even in cases where we’re keeping the status quo, if we see our neighbors, contemporaries, or Facebook friends doing better, we’ll feel the same sense of loss and inadequacy as if we had really started a backwards slide.

Reputations

Sometimes, it isn’t a material challenge that creates a problem.  Sometimes, the challenge is a claim that damages our reputation – false or not.  While in large towns, it’s possible to escape the velocity and voracity of reputation, those in small villages, towns, and communities realize that reputation changes swiftly permeate the community, and once those perceptions have been formed, they’re permanent.  Nothing is as good as new gossip.  Nothing can make someone forget an accusation, whether true or false.

This sets up a situation where you’re not able to make mistakes, because they’ll always be with you and creates a sense that once you’re alienated that you’ll always be alienated – even if you don’t see that you’ve done anything to deserve it.

Marital Conflict

As I covered in my review of Divorce, in the United States and most of Western Europe, divorce has become much easier to obtain.  That has freed many from the bonds of a marriage that is abusive or simply leaves people with a sense that they’re not connected.  This creates a pathway to freedom for both spouses.

In some countries and cultures, the same cannot be said.  Sometimes, lopsided rules allow for men to have mistresses and initiate divorce, where women are perceived as property and have no freedom for sex outside their marriage or the capacity to divorce.  (See Anatomy of Love for more.)

Arranged marriages mean that neither party feels good about the arrangement, but men’s options are frequently broader.  This sometimes traps women and causes them to use their life as the last bargaining chip.  They know that their suicide will cause the community to consider whether the husband was being fair or not.  Sometimes, at least there are repercussions for the husband.

Judgement

In my review of The Available Parent, I shared the story of the manager whose child was playing soccer because he missed out on a scholarship.  He decided that his daughter would help him live his dreams.  I’ve long since lost track of him – but I wonder how much he accepted her as an individual separate from him, who could make her own decisions as she grew.

There’s some degree of enmeshment.  (See The Gift of Failure.)  He can’t see how she’s a different person than he is.  As a result, he’s likely to apply his judgement of himself to her – and that’s not fair.  There’s a common refrain from children that are overtly loved but have trouble making their own choices that parents should just accept them for who they are.

Suicide may be seen as the only way to escape their perceived control or persecution because the children aren’t making the choices that the parents want.

Relationships are a Zero-Sum Game

Have you ever noticed that when your friends get into a new romantic relationship, whether that’s dating or marriage, they seem to pull back from friendships?  It’s not you.  It’s not intentional.  You’re not imagining it.  Robin Dunbar spoke of the number of stable social relationships of primates – including humans – and said there is a number of relationships that we can maintain.  (See High Orbit – Respecting Grieving for more.)

Once we reach our capacity for relationships, any new relationship we form requires energy to maintain.  Maintaining that energy takes away from some other part of our lives – primarily, the relationships with others.  Certainly, there are some people who aren’t at their capacity for relationships – particularly in terms of time – but for many of us, to intensify a relationship requires that another must de-intensify.

This is why new romantic relationships can strangle out existing ones and destroy marriages.

Interdependence

If we want to be the most resistant to the pulls of suicide, one of the best approaches is not just strong relationships but a degree of interdependence on others.  The completely independent person would not need to worry about their impact on others.  They can stay inside their mind and decide that suicide is the best option.  However, when others will be caused hardship by your loss, it creates an opportunity to reach out to them – and to be dissuaded.  Mothers, with the exceptions of those caused by incest and rape, are less likely to die by suicide.  There’s a dependent who needs them; even if they themselves are feeling miserable, they know they need to help their baby.

Similarly, the degree of risk in close-knit groups is lower (but not zero).  The kind of relationship that creates the interdependence isn’t the primary concern.  What is the primary concern is the presence or absence of these relationships.

Homicide with a Willing Victim

Too many suicides slip into the range of being careless or reckless with one’s life.  Whether it’s the person who drives their car too fast, the motorcyclist who takes the curves while the bike is sliding out from under them, or the person who takes risks in other ways, not caring whether you live or die is relatively indistinguishable from any other form of suicide.

Too many suicides, whether suicide by cop or jumping in front of a train, creates a situation where someone must commit homicide and kill the willing victim.  In many cases, it cannot be avoided.  Once a train is moving, it’s impossible to stop quickly.  However, these often traumatize the engineers who know it was their train that killed the person – even if that was their intent.

Maybe it’s time we look further back from the intent of suicide into the social factors that led the person to the precipice in the first place.  Maybe it’s time to stop the conditions that create the desire for Suicide.

Book Review-Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It

I’ve never met a suicide survivor who wanted to congratulate the person they lost on a great decision.  Universally, the word that they wanted to tell them was “Stay.”  That’s why Stay: A History of Suicide and Philosophies Against It was so interesting.  What has history said about suicide and its acceptability to society?

Jennifer Hecht, who also wrote Doubt, starts by recounting a few of the influential people in her life whom she’s lost and some of the impact on her.  She longingly calls out to the people she’s lost to stay.

Suffering

I firmly believe that people who die by suicide are dealing with pain.  Whether it’s physical pain or the psychological pain that Shneidman called “psychache,” there’s something that makes death look more appealing than life.  (See The Suicidal Mind for more on psychache.)  I also believe that the best way we have of ensuring people do stay is to give them hope and reduce their pain.  (See The Psychology of Hope for more on what hope is and how to generate it.)  While reducing pain is individualized, there is a commonality in that changes don’t always need to be objective to make a difference.  Sometimes, just seeing things differently is enough.

Hecht starts with, “Suffer here with us instead.”  I struggle with that perspective, because it necessarily puts the requestor in the position of contributing to the hurt of another person.  That’s not to say that it’s necessary harmful in the long-term sense.  (See Hurt, Hurting, Hurtful for clarity on hurting.)  However, there’s also a sense of one up-one down.  (See Compelled to Control for more on one-up one-down.)  The person making the statement is necessarily saying they know better than the person themselves what is best for them.  As Motivational Interviewing points out, this isn’t a good position to be in.  (See also A Way of Being.)

The rest of the statement is, “We need you with us, we have not forgotten you, you are our hero. Stay.”  While I think that it’s a bit overstated, it’s a positive affirming statement about how much you want the person to continue to live.  However, the hyperbole of “hero” may cause someone to challenge the statement.

Future Selves

What we know about pain, stress, and suicide is that they cause people to focus on the current moment.  They may be hopeless because they see no way out of their current pain – even if there are viable options.  While Hecht calls the suicidal person to consider their future self who may want to live, her grief at her losses blinds her to the research that indicates, in the moment of passion, no one is going to be able to see their future selves.

One could say that they could have this argument preloaded into their thought processes, so that when the crisis arises, they’re prepared.  However, without some sort of a prompt, this, too, may be difficult to operationalize in the mind of the person struggling.

Collateral Damage

Another rational plea that is often used is that the person who is considering suicide think about how others will react to their death.  The first barrier is that they have the same perception as others, and that they don’t believe they’re a burden.  (See Thomas Joiner’s in Why People Die By Suicide.)  The second barrier is back to the constriction that prevents them from seeing anything but their current pain and the absolute desire to stop it.

Some say that suicide transfers the pain of the person who dies to their loved ones.  (See Suicide and Its Aftermath.)  And while this statement is not literally true, it’s both figuratively true and irrelevant.  The person who is struggling to live can’t see how their death will harm others.

Pain as the Path

Another argument is that the person should endure the pain, because it’s the pathway to wisdom.  While this may be true, it may not be enough.  We’re wired to make sense of the world, including the tragedies we face.  (See Trauma and Memory.)  However, when the pain becomes too severe, this is little solace.  Some will say that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  However, as Antifragile explains, that’s not truth.  There are bands of strain and challenge that can help you grow – but there are also levels of struggle that do nothing more than harm you and beat you down.

If we’re supporting someone with suicidal ideation our goal should be to ensure that their pain is minimized to a level where it can create growth.  (See Posttraumatic Growth for more.)

Hold Your Ground

Plato suggested that we are assigned guard posts, which we should attend until we are dismissed.  To die by suicide is to abandon our post and leave our community vulnerable.  The general principle is that we’re responsible to the community and choosing the time of our own death deprives the rest of the community of our life.

While this is a sound argument for the person making a determined decision to die by suicide, it won’t dissuade the impulsive person from dying by suicide.

Christian Suicide

Christianity has a problem with suicide.  Given Saul and Samson both in the Old Testament as well as Judas in the New Testament, suicide is both mentioned in the Bible and also not condemned.  Even Jesus’ death on the cross was one that he could have avoided.  The language is that he gave up his life – an active choice.  That means or at least implies suicide.  It’s no surprise, then, that early Christianity had no problem with suicide – particularly for martyrs.

Then the Church started shifting away from suicide being acceptable.  Through scholars and meetings, suicide became gradually less acceptable until it was outlawed, and those who died by suicide couldn’t be buried in the church graveyards.  Those who attempted but lived would be excommunicated.  It’s only in very recent times that the Church has accepted that people who die by suicide aren’t evil.

While suicide isn’t accepted by the Church, the prohibitions for the normal rites of burial are no longer denied.  The Church accepts it like they accept sin.  They don’t like it, but they accept that it’s impossible to prevent.

Islam

Islam’s position on suicide hasn’t changed much.  Islam prizes people who endure unbearable lives.  Suicide is therefore abandoning one’s opportunity to be honored and praised.  The specific rules regarding the disposition of bodies of those who died by suicide may vary from sect to sect, but the general disdain does not.

Dramatic Tragedy

There are multiple historical accounts where suicides could have been prevented if only we were more patient.  Marc Anthony thought Cleopatra was dead and therefore killed himself – and she killed herself upon discovering Marc Anthony’s death.  Had Romeo waited just a few more minutes, he would have seen that Juliet was still alive and desperately committed to him.  This forms the historical foundation of the aforementioned future selves argument.  Suicide is – as Phil Donahue said – “a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”  (See also Choosing to Live for permanent solution to a temporary problem.)  It cannot be undone.

From a prevention standpoint, we know that any time we put between a person and their chosen means reduces suicidal outcomes.  Suicidal crises – when people are willing and able to complete the act – are, relatively speaking, brief.  (See Alternatives to Suicide for more on suicidal crises.)  If someone can be helped or delayed in these moments, their chances of ultimate survival are quite good.

Third-Party Suicide

Since suicide was prohibited but being executed was not, many people got creative.  Women would commit murder to be sentenced to death.  That was until a law was enacted requiring that a person receive life imprisonment if they killed someone just to be killed.  Men would sometimes falsely claim bestiality, since that was a capital offense.  We know that these approaches were used from records.

In more recent times, it’s more common to see suicide by cop.  That is, a person creates a situation where police have no choice but to shoot and kill the person.  Often, this is because they’re brandishing a weapon or threatening others.  (See People in Crisis for more on suicide by cop.)

Our Own Dungeons

Some may believe that they’re their own dungeons.  They believe their bodies or their circumstances have trapped them.  In my review of The Neuroscience of Suicidal Behavior, I acknowledged that there’s no telling what a trapped animal will do – including the human animal.  When trapped, animals and humans are willing to do anything to escape.  In my review of When It Is Darkest, I explained that, sometimes, being trapped is only in their mind – but that doesn’t mean it’s not real to them.  Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning sheds light on how the external circumstances could be the same – a prisoner in a death camp – but individuals can respond very differently.

John Milton in Paradise Lost said, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”  If we want to help people stay, we need to simultaneously acknowledge and accept the way that they see the world and try to influence them in ways that turn a hell into heaven – rather than vice-versa.

It’s possible for a body to feel as if it’s imprisoning us when infirmities come upon us.  However, research shows that the mood of accident victims who become paralyzed will likely return to a baseline after a few years.  None of us have perfect or ideal situations, but there’s often some good in any situation.  If we can gently guide people to it, we can help them be more positive.

Life Worth Living

In the end, rather than imploring people to stay, we should focus on helping them find that their life is worth living.  If they can find passion and purpose, then they’ve got a chance.  If they can develop a habit of service, they’ll realize that the world needs them.  If they can see the positives of their experiences, then maybe they won’t have to be asked to stay.  Maybe they will want to Stay.

Book Review-Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying

Some books acquire their own mythology.  Groups become so polarized about them that they gain their own mythical qualities.  In the space of suicide prevention, Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying has this air to it.  It’s a book that many people in suicide prevention won’t get near or read.  Some claim that they don’t want to financially support instructions for suicide – others just can’t get past the sticky, taboo feelings.  I have no such prohibition.  If I am to speak completely and honestly to people who are struggling, I can’t deny or ignore the sources of information that they’ll be consuming.  I need to at least understand it, too – even if I don’t agree.

The stumbling path that led me here has me considering After the Ball – a book that I deeply appreciate – and Undoing Suicidism.  The latter book is, in part, a manifesto and a call for greater openness to the idea of suicide as an option.  It forced me to evaluate under what conditions a society should prohibit and allow individuals of the society to execute their rights – including the right to self-terminate.

Limits

Before beginning, it’s important to note Humphrey’s stated intention, which is to provide clarity and direction only for those he deems worthy of taking their own lives – or at least those who society more or less accepts may take their own life.  More specifically, he’s referring to those who are suffering from a terminal illness.  He acknowledges that people not in this intended category have used the book, but he takes no responsibility for their use of the knowledge.

A few decades ago, the book may have been the only vehicle to get this information.  Tragically, this is no longer the case.  Today, there’s no effective way to prevent the same information from being found with an internet search.  While this doesn’t support the idea of publishing a book, it is simply an acknowledgement that it’s hard to put all the evils of the world back into Pandora’s box.

I found that Humphrey did wash his hands of responsibility – but not concern.  There are, throughout the text, repeated warnings that there are a finite set of people that he’s targeting, and that if you’re not in the target audience, you should stop.  While this may prod some to continue, the intent to focus on the terminally ill seems sincere.

A Good Death

Humphrey asserts (and I disagree), “What separates a chosen ‘good death’ from a bad one almost always comes down, upon analysis, to the amount of planning, attention to detail, and the quality of the assistance, all of which are vital to decent termination of life.”  First, let me say that while he says “death” here, I believe he’s constrained himself to the type of self-termination that he proposes.  That isn’t to say a firefighter who dies rescuing a family or the police officer who saves someone and then, through overexertion, dies of a heart attack didn’t die a “good death.”  Where Humphrey is focused, it seems, is upon the certainty of death and the mess that those who are left behind must address.

So, while he describes it as a “good death,” I’d propose a “successful plan.”  In the narrowly defined group of people who are making a well-considered, appropriately-consulted plan, I can take no issue that the death should be as certain, pain-free, and lovingly supported as possible.  This is at the heart of Undoing Suicidism – and it’s a good point.  Should suicide be the last option?  Yes.  However, that doesn’t preclude it from being an option.

Watching Them Die

Humphrey explains that “it is not a crime in America to watch somebody kill themselves and do nothing to stop it.”  In short, some of the concerns that Baril has in Undoing Suicidism – that the person should not be alone – doesn’t appear to be a problem in the US.  I can’t say that, even with the precautions that Humphrey recommends, there won’t be some uncomfortable moments and difficult questions when the police arrive – if they do.  However, in short, they can’t convict you of the crime of watching a death, because that crime isn’t on the books.

Separately from the legal concerns, there’s the concern of how one will process the death of someone they care for.  They wouldn’t be present if they didn’t care, and because they care, there’s bound to be some emotional impact – predicted or not.  Most people have never been present when another person dies.  It can be a profoundly sacred space – but it isn’t always.  Those who choose to watch – regardless of their degree of involvement in assistance to the suicide (or not) – are likely to be impacted in ways that they can’t predict.

Accidents

One of the confounding issues when it comes to gathering statistics on suicide rates is the problem of whether something is an accident or a suicide.  In the United States, over 90.7% of vehicle miles traveled are with a seatbelt.  Seatbelts and other safety features in cars have steadily reduced traffic fatalities.  (See Unsafe at Any Speed.)  The lack of seatbelt use in an accident is sufficiently odd that it raises suspicion.  (Still, I can say from secondhand experience that this is not always enough to override an accidental mode recorded on the death certificate.)

If someone runs their car into a tree or abutment at full speed, did they intend to hit it, or did they lose control?  In the context of Final Exit, what are the chances of survival?  The chances for survival without a seatbelt aren’t great.  However, from the point of view of Humphry’s framework, it’s unclear how much pain one may suffer before unconsciousness.

Prosecution

Humphrey is careful to recommend approaches that limit the chance of prosecution of those who survive.  It includes multiple strategies for demonstrating a clear sense of intent.  However, he also offers that close relatives are treated more favorably than friends.  (He doesn’t say so, but non-heirs even more so.)  He also indicates that less violent means reduce the chances of prosecution.

I think it’s fair to say that most people don’t want to leave problems for those who care about them (and therefore they are likely to care about).  The considerations for prosecution are worthy of mention.

Just Stop

Humphrey asserts that, “A willingness to die is insufficient alone to bring about death.”  Here, I both agree – and disagree.  I’ve seen enough people make decisions to let go of their struggle with their illness to recognize that there’s a set of conditions where the person is being kept alive by their sheer force of will; when it evaporates, their end is near.  (My experience is within weeks, if not days.)

Humphrey continues by explaining that someone can’t just “stop breathing.”  While he expects that some who are good at meditation might be able to achieve this, the mechanics of brain function are dubious about this point.  We’re designed to resume breathing when oxygen saturation in the prefrontal cortex is lowered below the point of conscious thought.  However, there are other, more accessible, approaches to biological manipulation that can hasten death.

Mode of Death Certification

Historically, the stigma against reporting suicide as the mode of death has been reported to have depressed the actual numbers of suicide deaths.  While the laws that would penalize people’s families for the death by suicide are off the books, the stigma is still alive and well.  Above, I mentioned what I saw as a clear-cut suicide, but the mode of death was recorded as an accident.

Some of what lingers is the exclusion for suicide in life insurance payouts.  Nationally, Humphrey quotes that the exclusion can’t exist for more than two years, or more than a year in Colorado.  The dynamics are that the life insurance providers don’t want people buying a policy and then dying by suicide to leave money to others.  If someone dies by suicide in that window, their premiums are refunded.  Problems still exist to get proper recording on a death certificate.

The other point that Humphrey makes – which Postmortem contradicts – is that the family must consent to an autopsy.  The property rights of a person to their body terminate at death.  While family wishes are generally respected with regards to an autopsy, they are unlikely to prohibit an autopsy even if they object.  All that must exist is a suspicion of foul play – which is an incredibly low standard.

Keeping It Secret

Humphrey acknowledges that some will desire to obscure the mode of death (suicide) for reasons of their own.  His recommendation is that a suicide should not be covered up, but that silence and discretion can and possibly should be used.  The challenge here is that covering up any aspect of a death is risky.  Doing so risks discovery and the loss of credibility.  That can lead to problems that aren’t good for anyone.

There are, in most states, limitations about who can get death certificates and how much information they can get from them.  It’s reasonable to record the death as a suicide and have not very many people know that.  Few people see death certificates.  More frequently, people learn of a death through the obituary, in which anything the family desires can be written.  An associate of mine confided that her father’s death was suicide, but the obituary said, “hunting accident.”  She wondered who would believe that story when his death occurred in July (not any recognized hunting season).

While I discourage the decision for suicide in all circumstances, there is some perspective to be gained by considering the Final Exit.

[I’ve intentionally omitted the means and methods with their efficacies and problems from this review.  My point was to investigate the issues surrounding planned death, not to select a means – or encourage others to do so.]

Book Review-Postmortem: How Medical Examiners Explain Suspicious Deaths

It’s not a morbid curiosity (or maybe it is).  One of the key aspects of suicide work is the psychological autopsy or fatality review.  It’s an attempt to understand the intent of someone who died to determine whether their death was an accident – or if it was intentional.  If I was going to understand the psychological autopsy, I felt I needed to understand how the overall autopsy process worked, which led me to Postmortem: How Medical Examiners Explain Suspicious Deaths.

It starts with an understanding that, even though it’s performed postmortem (after death), it’s done for the living.  It helps us to better understand what happened and what things can cause death.  Autopsies are at the heart of much of our medical knowledge.  What’s curious is when the long-term or justice needs served by an autopsy come in conflict with the short-term, organ-donation, life-saving benefits.  The ethical dilemmas are large in a space where we’re seeking the truth by means of dissection.

Suspicion

Now, autopsies are done only when the death is suspicious, “suspicious” meaning the death occurred out of place or out of time.  Perhaps the person was found two states away from where they lived.  Maybe they died young without any known diseases.  Maybe the scene of their death just didn’t look or feel right.  (See Sources of Power about unconscious, tacit knowledge that can lead to “not right” without the ability to articulate why.)

Overall, roughly 75% of deaths occur in places where they’re expected.  Nursing homes and hospitals have staff that understand how to be culturally sensitive in response to a death.  While it is not the desired outcome, it is one that they’re all too familiar with.  Of the remaining 25%, most (20% of all deaths) are suspicious.  Those are the ones that consume the medical examiner’s attention.

Hope

The kind of hope that fills the medical examiner isn’t going to help the deceased.  If they discover an infection, it can be that it may help prevent its spread or aid in its identification.  They can save other lives by means of advancing medicine and public health initiatives.  However, a different situation reveals a homicide rather than a natural disease.

In the case of homicide, the medical examiner serves the public good by increasing the chances of finding and punishing the offender.  This frequently removes them from the general population, thus preventing another homicide.  Additionally, the belief that, if you murder another individual, you’ll be brought to justice deters the action.  (See Dreamland for the power of deterrent.)

Expert Testimony Standards

Ultimately, if a medical examiner determines that a person was murdered, they’ll be called to trial.  During the trial, the medical examiner will be called as an expert witness.  A series of court decisions collectively known as Daubert-Joiner-Kumho establish the criteria upon which a judge can disqualify a witness as an expert witness.  I cover the criteria in detail in my post for Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology, and in my review of The Cult of Personality Testing, I explain how Rorschach’s inkblots fail to meet this test.

It’s for these reasons that the approaches medical examiners use are exacting and why their documentation is rigorous.  They want to ensure that their testimony stands up to the judge’s criteria – and ultimately cross-examination.  The cross-examination represents a bigger problem, because no matter how high the standards are in a medical examiner’s office, there are always more things that can be done; it’s important to help the jury understand that the steps that aren’t done don’t add enough value.

NASHU Standard

For the most part, medical examiners use a standard for the manner of death.  NASHU stands for Natural, Accidental, Suicide, Homicide, or Undetermined.  Buried in this is the problem of inferring intent.  Did the person intend to run off the road into the abutment, or did they lose control of their vehicle?  One is an accident, and the other is a suicide.  Did the mechanic intentionally disable the brakes on the vehicle, or did they simply fail?  One is a homicide, and the other is an accident.

Hiding Intent

A bullet wound is relatively easy to document and implicates a gun as the method of death.  However, it says nothing for the manner of death – it says nothing for intent.  Was it an accidental discharge while cleaning the gun?  Was it an attempt to die by suicide?  Did someone else fire the gun?

Some medical examiners had previously only recorded the manner of death as a suicide if there was a suicide note.  However, this substantially undercounted the number of suicides, because the rate of suicide notes for death by suicide is quite low.  (See Clues to Suicide.)  In many cases, the person dying by suicide intentionally hid their intent – at least prior to their death – to prevent people from trying to stop them.

Similarly, murderers have substantial motivation to hide their behaviors, so the medical examiner might classify the death as natural or accidental – or at least undetermined.  So, while intent is difficult to discover, it’s the job of the medical examiner to use all the medical tools at their disposal to expose the method and manner of death.

Thanatography

A biography is the story of the living.  It’s the story of their life.  A thanatography is a story – or narrative – of the death.  If those around the deceased volunteer the social situation for the individual, it may include their losses and environmental problems, but frequently it does not.  Think about the impact on intent if the deceased recently lost a job or a love or had financial or legal problems.  It creates significant doubt that their death was either natural or accidental – though these same factors would tend to create poorer cognitive processing and therefore poorer decision-making, potentially leading to an accident.

Things We Do

Disturbing a dead body is taboo in Western societies, which is why there is a degree of concern about the autopsy process.  However, we accept it as a necessary process to protect the public interest.  We do many things in an attempt to save patients, which make the medical examiner’s job harder.  Life-saving attempts like CPR have successful recovery rates in the single digits and necessarily create their own traumas.  When it’s not successful, the medical examiner is forced to decide whether the injuries they see were causal to the death or were a part of the attempts to retain life.  (Most people don’t realize how much force must be used to do CPR correctly.)

Addiction over Intent

With addictive substances, like alcohol, the precipitating causes of death are presumed to be overdoses rather than suicide.  The presumption is that the factors that would lead to an accident are stronger than their agency to produce a suicide.  (See The Mind Club for more about agency.)  In cases of overdose, it’s rare that the evidence can outweigh the bias towards an accident.  Certainly, a suicide note is clear but, other, subtle signs of distress may justify the increased substance use as a way of numbing.

Medical examiners are used to this kind of precedence in general, with cardiac (heart) causes taking precedence over pneumology (lungs).  Immediate, lethal trauma has precedence over chronic disease.  In this way, there’s an order to the evaluation of criteria.

Validity of Precision

The documentation process can consume 75% of the work of the medical examiner because of its criticality to the potential legal needs – whether defending the office or prosecuting a murderer.  In this documentation, accuracy is privileged over precision.  Bands of gold on the left hand of the victim will be described as such even if it’s clear to everyone that it’s a wedding ring.  The first is an observation.  The second is a culturally-informed value judgement – and is thus less about truth and more about the beliefs of the examiner.

Witnesses

The history of law has a long relationship with witnesses both in recognizing their necessity and their lack of reliability.  In numerous places, the Christian Bible explains the need for two witnesses – including Deuteronomy 19:15.  The implication is false accusations, but there’s more than that.  Witnesses are notoriously unreliable owing to our belief that our memories – and theirs – are accurate representations, like a photograph or a video tape.  However, we know quite clearly that our memories are more reconstructions than they are recordings of the actual events.  (See White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts.)

It’s a difficult spot for prosecutors when the memories of the witnesses come in direct conflict with the pathological evidence that’s captured by the medical examiner.  Simple changes like believing a person was stabbed in their left or right side when the physical evidence shows the opposite can unwind the credibility of a witness’s testimony.

Getting Away with Murder

While precautions are taken to prevent someone from a murder going undetected, not everything in the autopsy process is biased towards detection.  Precautions like delaying examination for 24 hours and limiting the toxicology screenings to the things that make the most sense mean that some mechanisms for murder can slip past detection.  Some substances break down in the 24-hour period and aren’t detectable.  Others are sufficiently rare that they’re rarely tested for.

Medical examiners noted that the homicides they saw tended to be of the “heat of passion” kind.  These murders aren’t well planned out and are thus relatively easy to spot.  Of course, if someone had planned out a murder well, the medical examiners would reach the same conclusion – leaving the well-planned and executed to accidents, natural, or undetermined, because there were no traces of evidence left.  Either way, the chances of getting caught taking someone else’s life are sufficiently high as to be a deterrent.

Police Homicide

Invariably, there will be a requirement for a medical examiner to evaluate a death caused by a police officer.  Some cases will be where the suspect forced the officer into a decision to shoot.  It’s possible that some of these are best described as suicide by cop, where the victim wanted to die but couldn’t do it themselves, so they created a situation of threat that no officer could ignore.

Other cases are tragically where the officer used too much force for no valid reason.  The problem, for the medical examiner, is that the bias to not declare the officer – whom they’ve worked with for years – as the problem is large.  It’s a very high bar for a medical examiner to determine that the officer used a level of force that resulted in death because of the discomfort they’ll feel in doing so.

When Babies Die

In the second half of the nineteenth century, historians estimate that 15-to-30 percent of infants didn’t live to their first birthday.  It’s difficult to attach to a baby that you believe only has a 3:4 chance of living.  By attaching, you’re setting yourself up for a high degree of loss.  In today’s world, infant mortality is substantially lower.  That’s why, when a parent or caretaker doesn’t show sufficient concern for the death, they’re automatically considered as a suspect.  There’s a cultural norm to grieving even if it’s a unique experience.  Reactions outside the normal, expected band are suspicious.

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is a real problem that plagues infant mortality.  In 2002, about 8 percent of infant deaths were attributed to SIDS.  Some of those undoubtedly weren’t SIDS in the proper sense.  Some of them are situations where babies are suffocated – mostly accidentally.  One Ohio coroner observed wryly that “the only difference between SIDS and a suffocation is a confession.”  Co-sleeping relationships, while understandable, place the baby at risk.

The Cost of Life

Organ donation saves lives.  They’re frequently called “gifts of life;” however, they’re also big business.  Technically, the organs themselves are gifts, but recipients are still expected to pay for the services necessary to get them.  Sometimes, the needs of the medical examiner – including the 24-hour delay before examining a body and the potential desire to biopsy or cut open an organ to learn more – comes at odds with these life-saving goals.

There are no easy answers to what should take precedence – the harvesting of organs and both the lives saved and the economic engine it entails may be the right answer.  Conversely, the need to protect the public from murderers has some lifesaving value, too.  Which one should take precedence is a question that is becoming more legislated, with laws being written about who has precedence and when.  This is necessary, because in some cases, medical examiners have failed to yield their presumptive authority for the preservation of life through organ donation.

It’s an ethical dilemma of the highest order, as it means life and death for different people.  We’ll never know which decision was right, even Postmortem.

Book Review-Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide

As a cisgender, old, white guy, I have no doubt that I come from a different place than Alexandre Baril in Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide.  I’ve had the honor of sitting on a few diversity panels as an ally.  Despite my honest attempts to understand, I recognize that I am falling short.  The good news is that my friends – and fellow panelists – are often gentle in nudging me into a more understanding position.

I enjoy having my perspectives challenged.  I’ll often read from both sides of an argument or speak to parties on opposite sides of an issue who refuse to be in the same room.  For me, this is the heart of understanding: being willing to listen to everyone and accept multiple perspectives.  I’m far from agreeing with everything that Baril proposes, but I accept there are some interesting and challenging questions that we need to answer as a society.

Compulsory Aliveness

What right does a person have to insist that another person should stay alive?  Our current response to a suicidal person isn’t first to understand their pain and why they want to die or to see what might be done to make their life more worth living.  Instead, we focus on the requirement that someone must stay alive.  They must fight their suicidal urges and persevere regardless of their pain.  In effect, we’ve said that society can say when you should – and should not – die.  Someone else brought you into this world, and you’re not authorized to take yourself out of it on your own.

It’s important to note the separation between the current expectations and laws of the country you’re in and your religious beliefs – and what might be the right answer.  I say this in the context of understanding this is a dilemma – it’s not solvable, and there is no right answer.  Individual versus community is one of the dilemmas that Kidder enumerates in How Good People Make Tough Choices.  In Trust, Fukuyama walks through how different focuses of trust between societies, organizations, and families can lead to radically different responses and behaviors.  These are the kind of wicked problems that Horst Rittel was talking about decades ago.

That is, there is no solution, no one right answer.  Instead, if we want to be responsive, we must constantly reevaluate in the light of new information, new results, and new concerns.  Here, then, Baril is calling us to evaluate whether the current balance is right – and argues that it is not.

Start with Caring

There’s no doubt that showing care and concern for other humans is inside of the scope of prosocial behavior that we expect from everyone.  Far too often, we’re too busy in our lives to notice the struggling around us.  Even if we’re interested in others’ suffering, we must acknowledge that their struggles and their experiences may interfere with getting help.  When asked how they are, they may answer, “Fine.”  When directly asked about whether they’re considering dying by suicide, they may lie.

They’ll lie for fear of being interrogated, locked up, and forced into situations that they either know -or just suspect – will be bad.  While genuine concern for another person and even a modicum of relationship can help people share their inner struggles, we’re averse to it at a cultural level.  We know “better” than to share our problems for fear that someone will use them against us.

While a caring conversation about someone else is a good way to start, it’s far from preventing someone from believing that suicide is the right answer for them.

Immediate Detention

[Disclaimer: I’m not an attorney, and this isn’t legal advice.]

The fear is that police will use the laws the allow for immediate detention for a person.  In general, law enforcement can hold someone against their will – even if no crime has been committed – if they are an immediate danger to themselves and others.  On one side of this issue is the person who is considering suicide.  They fear that this provision in law will cause them to lose their freedom and start them down a path of problems.

On the other side is law enforcement, who are concerned that if they utilize immediate detention, they will be sued for violating someone’s civil rights.  At least in the United States, law enforcement personnel have qualified immunity when they’re performing their duties.  However, this immunity is nullified if it’s shown that the officer acted that maliciously or recklessly disregarded a person’s civil rights.  While this seems cut and dried in theory, it’s not so straightforward in practice.

The standard for what constitutes imminent danger to self or others isn’t clear.  If you were to say that you plan to kill someone on December 1, 2050, then you’re clearly not an immediate risk.  Similarly, planning to die at a specific, far-off date wouldn’t trigger undue concern.  However, that’s not generally how it’s phrased.  “I’m having suicidal thoughts” is a typical, vague response.  It puts the officer in the position of needing to decide if you intend to act on these thoughts immediately or whether they’re something that you have no intention to act on.

Depending on the officer, they’ll request a behavioral health professional who can make this decision, call an on-call judge to get input, or make the decision themselves.  Something as weak as “suicidal thoughts” may be coupled with other context clues to yield a decision that there is imminent harm and detention is warranted.

It probably happens less than the suicidal person fears – and more than the law enforcement officer would like.  Operating in gray areas isn’t fun for anyone.

The truth is that an immediate detention results in a trip to an emergency room and a more thorough evaluation.  That’s not the real problem.  The real problem is emergency detention – the kind that leads to extended stays.  Immediate detentions, are in most states in the United States, limited to 24 hours.

Emergency Detention

In many states, mental health professionals can ask for an emergency detention (sometimes called a 72-hour hold because of the duration).  This normally follows immediate detention and involves more thorough evaluation and treatment by a behavioral health professional.  This is what most fear when they say that they’re having suicidal thoughts.

The rules for these detentions vary widely, but they can sometimes be extended and sometimes lead to a longer-term commitment hearing.  Whatever the case, they’re very scary for the person involved.

Do we need a MAID?

Some states and Canada have laws for medical assistance in dying – or assisted suicide.  Conceptually, it allows medical professionals to provide either resources or assistance in a patient dying; practically, it represents a few challenges.  The basic premise is that a professional assesses that someone has carefully considered suicide and has decided it’s right for them.  Once this decision is made, the preparations are made.

However, whether we call it “carefully considered” or “well-reasoned,” the question becomes what meets this standard?  If the standard is set too low, then people will needlessly end their own lives.  If it’s set too high, then people will subvert this system and instead resort to their own means.

The benefits of reasonably set criteria to society are two-fold.  First, the substantially lower chance of medical costs for attempted rescue.  Second, the consequences of an attempt that doesn’t end in death.  To the individual, it allows them dignity and the ability to have loved ones with them when they die.

On My Terms

One could argue, then, that the person can die by suicide even if they don’t receive medical assistance.  However, that necessitates that it be done in secret with potentially painful means that may not be successful and instead permanently disable the person, making their pain and suffering worse.  The argument for an accessible, societally-accepted opportunity to kill oneself follows the same reasoning that we legalize other behaviors.

America tried prohibition and failed, because it drove alcohol underground and did more damage than good due to the rise criminal organizations and the lack of quality control that ensued.  States across the country are decriminalizing marijuana.  We’ve decided that it’s better to regulate and accept the behavior instead of criminalizing it.

On a Mission

One of the opportunities I’ve had is to sit around conversations about what works with church missions – and what doesn’t.  I’ve learned about the challenges of even well-meaning but under-informed people.  “Steel Axe Heads for Stone Age Australians” is a powerful example of how things can go wrong.  (See Diffusion of Innovations for more.)  To simplify the problem, it’s a difference between “doing for” and “doing with.”  The first is more honestly stated as “doing to.”  When we approach a mission as doing something for/to a group of people, we’ve got it wrong.  We need to enable them, so that they can do it themselves.

The shift in thinking moves us to asking questions about what suicidal people need or want instead of deciding that they need what we think they need.  I’m not saying that in every case we’ll agree with what they want – but we should at least know what it is.

Sanism

Who should be allowed to decide for themselves to die?  If they’re not, then who should be allowed to make that decision?  Should executors of their wills or their heirs be able to make the choice?  This is the heart of the question about neurodiverse people who process information and emotions in ways other than is considered normal.  Some use the word “sanism” to refer to discrimination against the neurodiverse.

Here, too, I think we have serious moral challenges that have no clean solution.  If people are living with mental disabilities to the point that they can’t make all decisions for themselves, can they or someone they designate ask for assisted suicide for them?

The standard protection is that the person who is electing death for another not benefit from the decision.  That is, they can’t be an heir or an executor to the estate.  The problem with this conceptually is that these are presumably the very people who care the most for you – and if they don’t, what remedies does society have to keep them honest?

Last Chance

For those whose suicidal thoughts are persistent or at least recurring, it should be noted that suicide is the last option.  Surely, there are “impulsive” suicides who will not fully consider their options.  (See Decision Making and Sources of Power for perspectives on decision making.)  For those who’ve battled with suicide for a long time, there is a sense of clarity that suicide is irreversible.  There’s also often a sense that it’s a bad option.  However, the problem is that there are no other options that seem available.

Shneidman said that “only” is the four-letter word of suicide.  (See The Suicidal Mind.)  That’s because people who die by suicide see it as the “only” option.  They’ve lost hope that their pain and suffering can be or will be remedied by any other solution.  In the absence of other options, you go with the only one you have.  That’s one of the reasons that concepts like “safe for now,” which leaves the option of suicide open in the future but removes it from the table for now, are so important.  (See Managing Suicidal Risk, 2e for more.)

Moral Duty

Societal norms require that individuals dissuade others from suicide.  We’re expected to want the person to stay alive – whether we do or not is not relevant.  We’ve got to learn how to validate their perspectives – even if we don’t personally agree – before attempting to change the course of their thinking.  Techniques like Motivational Interviewing can help fight against the righting reflex, which invalidates the other person’s perspectives and feelings and may make suicidal ideation worse both to fight the invalidation or, if they accept the invalidation, develop self-hate.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call our desire to help our fellow man a bad thing.  I would, instead, say that we’re sometimes confused by what helping is – and isn’t.  I do believe that accepting that someone would want to leave this life, their community, and us is a hard thing.  However, if we’re not willing to accept that there are some times when suicide is a valid option – as rare as they may be – we may have to take a more radical approach to get to Undoing Suicidism.

Book Review-Suicide and Social Justice: New Perspectives on the Politics of Suicide and Suicide Prevention

We’re trapped in a view of suicide that conceptualizes it as a psychological problem.  We can’t see how to integrate multiple views of the problem from separate sociological and psychological standpoints.  Suicide and Social Justice: New Perspectives on the Politics of Suicide and Suicide Prevention aims to remove the barriers and allow us to see the problem of suicide from a wholistic perspective.  In doing so, it directly challenges some of the false narratives that we’ve been led to believe.

Mental Health Conditions

Going back to the idea that someone would need to be “mad” to die by suicide, we’ve tightly coupled mental health to suicide to the point where some, like Thomas Joiner, claim that everyone that dies by suicide has some sort of mental illness.  The problem is that the basis of these claims are weak at best.  With incredibly small sample sizes, no reference point against the general population, and other methodological issues, the belief that 90% (the more commonly quoted number) of suicides have a mental health issue simply isn’t supported by the data.

First, the proposed mental health issues are based on retrospective analysis.  It’s the psychological autopsy process created by Shneidman applied to people whom the interviewer knew died by suicide.  While Shneidman intended the psychological autopsy to help clarify the mode of death, that’s not the way the process is being used.

As a point of fact, Eli Robbins at the University of Washington at Saint Louis simultaneously developed the retrospective review.  Their study, involving 137 cases, was the first to establish a prevalence of mental health issues for those who died by suicide.  However, in their zeal to establish the relationship, they made two critical errors.  First, they failed to establish any sort of base rate in the community.

Their percentage of mental health issues was well above 90%, but only when they included undiagnosed issues.  They used the reports of friends to establish that the deceased might have had a mental health condition.  The problem with this approach is both interviewer bias leading to higher than actual numbers as well as a failure to provide a control group.

We simply don’t know what the diagnosed percentage of mental illness was for accidental, natural, and homicide deaths to know if the diagnosed percentages are different.  Nor was any effort undertaken to interview these other kinds of deaths to establish the undiagnosed ratios.

One could argue that there are other studies with similar findings – and of course there are.  However, they suffer from similar and more egregious methodological errors.  The definitions for alcohol use disorder would encompass a very large percentage of the United States population – but, again, controls are lacking to see the difference.

It’s in that context that the World Health Organization indicated less than half of the people dying by suicide in the US had a mental health condition.  Contrast this with the fact that depression and anxiety are at epidemic levels.  The base rate in the population for mental illness is higher than we’d like to believe.

If more than half of the people who die by suicide don’t have a diagnosed mental health condition, we can’t very well screen for, identify by, or even strongly correlate depression and suicide.

Henry Murray

I was first exposed to Murray’s work through some testing that should never have been.  (See TAT in The Cult of Personality Testing.)  I continued researching his work and his relationship with Christina Morgan in Love’s Story Told.  However, perhaps Murray’s greatest contribution to psychology is in his categorization of psychogenic needs.  It was Shneidman’s view that it was one of these thwarted needs that resulted in the press and perturbation that drove people towards suicide.  (See Suicide as Psychache.)  In short, it’s through going back to Murray’s work that we can see the connection between society and suicide.

If the environment that you grow up in is hostile towards your psychogenic needs being met, the models of Shneidman and Thomas Joiner places you at the threshold of suicide.  (See Why People Die by Suicide for Joiner’s model.)  This expands the perspective of psychology to include the social factors that drive someone’s psychology.

It’s important to remember that Kurt Lewin said that the behaviors we get from someone are a function of both the person and their environment.  (See A Dynamic Theory of Personality.)  Suicide is a behavior.  We can’t extract the social justice from the psychology.

Predictability

Despite decades of evidence that we can’t reliably predict suicide, we’re obsessed with the idea that we might be able to.  In Rethinking Suicide, Craig Bryan is quite clear that the tools we have don’t have the precision necessary to be a reliable predictor.  He’s not the only one who’s sounding the alarm that we’re continuing to go in the wrong direction.  The sheer statistics of suicide make prediction almost impossible.  With rates measured per 100,000, they’re tragically too frequent and statistically too rare to be reliably predicted.

Bryan makes the point that we can’t predict automobile accidents either.  We can’t determine ahead of time who will and who won’t be involved in an accident.  With 20% of suicide attempters reporting they hadn’t considered it more than 5 minutes prior to their attempt – and the number jumping to 71% one hour ahead of their attempt – it’s effectively impossible to intervene between thought and action.  We’ve got to look at other options.

Gatekeeper Programs

The concept of a gatekeeper training program is that you educate the community of people that others interact with, so that they’ll know what to look for and will feel more comfortable engaging people they perceive to be at risk.  It was first described by Dr. John Snyder in 1971.  Measuring the efficacy of gatekeeper programs isn’t easy for the same reasons as predicting suicide.  How do you track how many suicide attempts are averted – and what value do you assign to each one?  Statistically, we know that most people will only make one attempt – and that if they use a firearm for that attempt, there’s about a 90% chance that the attempt will be fatal.

Gatekeeper programs aren’t a complete solution.  However, the chapter on Cultural Continuity and Indigenous Youth Suicide by Michael J. Chandler and Christopher E. Lalonde unfairly criticizes gatekeeper programs.  They cite narrowly targeted indigenous implementations where no effect could be found and attempt to apply it against the entirety of gatekeeper implementations.  Conversely, later in the book, an AAS meeting quote is provided: “The lay volunteer was probably the most important single discovery in the fifty-year history of suicide prevention.”

Given the relatively small number of deaths and trials of gatekeeper programs the best, honest answer is that the efficacy is unclear, because there haven’t been studies with sufficient statistical power.

The Economic Value of a Life

Assigning the monetary value of a life is a particularly morbid thing.  What’s worse is the internal comparisons that happen – as a result of societal conditioning – that a life isn’t worth living if it’s not able to economically contribute to a family or to society.  Instead of viewing life as intrinsically and inherently valuable, some people accept the lie that they’d be better off dead because they can no longer earn money.

Too many suicides are based on the person’s feeling that they’re no longer adding to the economic welfare of the others in their life and to their community.  Perhaps someday, we can separate a person’s value from their bank account.

Female Suicide

Across most of the world, females attempt suicide more frequently but die less frequently because they choose less lethal means.  However, in some countries, particularly countries where women are voiceless and oppressed by the patriarchy, their deaths exceed those of men.  Some of these suicides are a final, undeniable message to their society about their suffering and mistreatment.

In places where the societal roles are more circumscriptive, stepping outside of those roles can result in their murder or their suicide.  Simply speaking to a man who isn’t a relative can be enough to set a woman’s life towards death.  External pressures from the patriarchy can limit a woman’s world in ways that cause them to desire death.  From withdrawing from school, work, and romantic relationships to being forced to accept the polygamy of their husband, women sometimes use suicide as an escape.

Courage

Women are presumed to be less courageous than men.  However, this isn’t a fair characterization of the situation.  As Find Your Courage explains, courage isn’t the absence of fear but a willingness to move through fear.  Suicide is a difficult thing to do and is courageous in its own (twisted) way.  However, more than that, if you want to increase courage, you must decrease the factors that lead to fear.  When you create safety, you necessarily reduce the level of energy that being courageous requires.

The structure of some societies decreases the safety and increases the fear that women must face – making courage harder.

Suicide Training

The tragedy of mental health care is the paucity of suicide-specific training for providers.  In fact, the suicide safety plans developed by the VA clinicians has been evaluated as poor.  That is, the people who are entrusted with the protection of our veterans aren’t delivering  good care.  It’s no surprise, since few (if any) of them have more than a few hours of suicide specific training – if that.

We speak about the social stigma surrounding both mental health and suicide – but we fail to recognize that it’s a very weak correlate of service utilization.  In other words, it’s bad, but not relative to other challenges, including access.

The Role of Trauma

The sad fact is that our society inflicts trauma on some classes of people and that trauma leads to downstream problems, including both mental illness and suicide.  If we want to make our world better, we need to consider how we can reduce trauma and to teach people how to heal from trauma.  Ultimately, we want to decrease Suicide and [improve] Social Justice.

Book Review-Suicide as Psychache: A Clinical Approach to Self-Destructive Behavior

It’s dangerous to look at a multifaceted problem like suicide from a single lens, but if you had to pick a single view, Suicide as Psychache is a better place than most.  Before continuing, it’s important to recognize that Edward Shneidman is credited with founding the American Association of Suicidology and has written several other books.  (I’ve reviewed some of his other books: Clues to Suicide, The Cry for Help, The Suicidal Mind, and Autopsy of a Suicidal Mind.)

Gestapo

The German Secret State Police are no more, but that doesn’t stop people from imagining similar organizations preparing to knock down their door and destroy their lives.  There may, in fact, be other organizations, entities, people, and circumstances that are coming, which will radically alter someone’s life in a negative way.  However, what matters more from the perspective of suicide is whether a person believes that there are negative and particularly oppressive things to come.

Rick Snyder explains that hope is a cognitive process, not a feeling, in The Psychology of Hope.  People who are struggling with suicide have often lost their way and can’t find hope any longer.  Maybe that’s because they don’t see a way out.  Maybe it’s because they’ve begun to see the world as a negative and unhelpful place.  No matter what the cause, they need a way to feel like they’ll avoid being trapped in a negative life.

Perturbation

It’s anxiety or uneasiness.  It’s a sense that something isn’t right.  (See Cognition and Suicide and Suicide: Understanding and Responding for more.)  However, the impact that Shneidman saw on patients was that it caused cognitive constriction.  The more they became anxious or disturbed, the fewer options they could see – and the more that suicide seemed to become the only option.  (See The Suicidal Mind, Treating Suicidal Behavior, and Cognitive Therapy for Suicidal Patients for more on cognitive constriction.)

Movement

Suicide is sometimes conceptualized as people who desire death.  That’s probably literally correct, but it obscures an important point.  It misses the reason why they desire death.  In most cases, individuals desire death to escape life or some aspects of life.  They want to escape from the suffering and pain that they’ve endured or that they anticipate.  They’re not moving towards death as much as they’re moving away from negative aspects of life.

This creates an opportunity and an important way to reduce the probability of suicide.  If we want to reduce suicide, we need only help people see that their life is worth living – both for themselves and for others.

Over Center

There’s a technique in physics where a latch is “over center.”  In that condition, the more force that is applied, the more that the latch is maintained.  It’s an expression of the forces working in the system.  Kurt Lewin in Principles of Topological Psychology explains how forces kept people in different states, and how, at times when the forces changed, there would be enough energy to change the person’s state.

When Henry Murray conceptualized “press” – which may have been an analog for “pressure” – he was speaking of the forces that drive people to change their state.  (See Love’s Story Told for more on Murray.)  Murray was a mentor and friend of Shneidman’s.  It’s possible that both men saw the same patterns emerging as Lewin.  They saw that people could get into states that were hard to shake them from – either protective against suicidal ideation or caught in suicidal ideation.  (See also Capture for how it’s possible to get caught.)

Suicide in Genius

In 1921, Lewis Terman initiated a study of 1,528 gifted people, people selected for their above average intelligence.  Several others have picked up the mantle to run the longitudinal study to completion.  The good news is that the study has maintained a very low dropout rate over the decades.  The bad news is that, of the geniuses recruited, 22 people had died by suicide by 1960.  That means that, while the general population suicide rate was around 12 per 100,000, the Terman geniuses had a rate of about 1450 per 100,000 – or over 100 times the rate.

More recent research hasn’t shown similar results, but the rate is startling.

Mind the Gap

One of the possible reasons for the disparity may be the expectations that people have for their lives – and how their actual lives worked out.  Of Terman’s subjects, many came out with very normal, average, and ordinary lives.  If they had become wrapped up in the idea that they were special and gifted but found themselves in an average or below average social station and career, the gap between their internal expectations and their real state might have created the conditions for suicidal ideation to flourish.  (See Perfectionism for more.)

The Banal Suicide Note

Much of Shneidman’s career was focused around the promise of suicide notes (the first set he “borrowed” without permission).  However, in the end, he found them pedestrian and banal.  He found that his optimism was crushed by the reality of the completely unremarkable nature of most suicide notes.

He comments that the very act of writing a “proper” suicide note with insights might remove the conditions necessary to make an attempt.  This is certainly consistent with James Pennebaker’s work in Opening Up, where he saw that writing a narrative organized thoughts and reduced the force of trauma.

You Can Always Commit Suicide

The truth is that someone can commit suicide if they’re committed.  (See Suicide: Inside and Out.)  It’s always an option no matter how repulsive we on the other side may find it.  The key to this statement – which is echoed in a slightly different way by David Jobes in Managing Suicidal Risk – is that it allows for the idea that it could be the right answer in the future, it’s just not the right answer now.  Until we’ve taken every step, tried every option, to make life better, it’s just a future possibility.

That’s an important shift that allows the suicidal person to delay the idea without giving it up entirely based on the request of some professional that they barely know.  Of course, you want to ensure they know that life is also an option – but a life free from the suffering.

If you remove the psychache, then you remove the need to die by suicide.  That’s the power of viewing Suicide as Psychache.

Book Review-Autopsy of a Suicidal Mind

Decades after Shneidman started doing psychological autopsies at the request of the medical examiner, a mother who lost her son implored him to use his technique not to help decide whether the death was a suicide or not.  Arthur left a long suicide note, so there was no doubt that it was suicide.  However, she was a mom who wanted more insights about the death of her son than she could glean from the note on her own.  Autopsy of a Suicidal Mind is the report of the psychological autopsy of Arthur and an opportunity to see the process of discovery that one might follow to do a psychological autopsy.

Insightful Notes

Shneidman’s curiosity with suicide notes started in 1949.  By 1957, his study of suicide notes led to the publication of Clues to Suicide.  The Cry for Help continued his work of understanding suicide through the notes that people left behind – even when he openly recognizes the scarcity of such notes.  Autopsy of a Suicidal Mind was published in 2004, and he acknowledges that the study of suicide notes didn’t expose the profound insights that he had hoped for.  Most notes are individually banal.

Collectively, suicide notes haven’t revealed any one factor that is common to all suicides.  Despite the limitations, Arthur’s note offers a puzzle.

The Long Contradiction

Arthur’s note is unique partly because it’s composed over a long period of time and includes content written before an unsuccessful attempt on a Friday night.  An attempt to use opioids wasn’t enough.  Remarkably, he spent time with a friend and had lunch with his father between this Friday night attempt and his eventual death on Sunday evening.  It’s not the first time that Arthur’s conflict comes into view.

He previously aborted a suicide attempt – despite later insisting that the attempt was genuine.  It seems like Arthur was constantly caught as waves of a desire for death crashed over the rocks of his desire to live.  Eventually, the waves of desire for death would recede – but apparently not soon enough on the Sunday evening of his death.

Highs Before Lows

Apparently, Arthur’s times of greatest challenge – the deepest lows – came after the happiest of times.  It’s as if each moment of happiness needed to be paid for by an equal moment of pain.  I think we’ve all experienced loss as we exit a time of happiness.  We mourn the loss of time with friends when we leave after a long weekend.  We feel the pain of leaving vacation, because we know that we must work for a time before we can be freed to spend our time completely as we wish again.

For Arthur, these pains seemed magnified – and overwhelming.

No Smoking Gun

One of the challenges in Arthur’s case is the lack of a trigger, a smoking gun, that would indicate what final straw pushed him over the edge into the depths of despair.  It seemed, as far as anyone could tell, that his last day was like any other day.  No better, no worse.

That is, perhaps, a part of the problem.  Perhaps Arthur had lost his hope, because every day was filled with pain.  (See The Psychology of Hope for more about hope.)

A Mother’s Sacrifice

Thomas Joiner in Why People Die by Suicide explains that feeling like a burden increases the likelihood of suicide.  Arthur’s mother, for all her concern, felt like she had given up 30 years of her life for Arthur.  He’d been described as a problematic child.  His story had him struggling to adapt, including thumb sucking until 9.  Temper tantrums showcased his inability to control emotions from a very young age.

Without finding fault, one has to wonder how the mother’s belief that she sacrificed for Arthur impacted his feelings of burdensomeness.

Pointless

Philosophers love to ask questions like, “What’s the meaning of life?”  It’s an interesting pondering when expressed in a neutral or positive form.  However, it takes a dark tone when one asks the question, “What’s the point of it all?”  Arthur is known to have asked such questions, and his friend simply shrugged it off as a philosophical pondering.  The problem for Arthur, it seems, is that it wasn’t a pointless pondering.  He was really grasping to find meaning in life to allow him to hold on despite the self-described psychological pain.

Nietzsche said, “A man who has a why can bear almost any how.”  It seems that Arthur was seeking that why.  He sought it in becoming a physician and an attorney.  He looked for it in marriage and in love but apparently without success.

Perfectionism

Perfectionism is an insidious monster that slinks its way into people’s thinking and takes their joy.  The Paradox of Choice introduced me to the idea of maximization – where it has to be the best – and satisfaction – where it just has to be good.  Perfectionism is the concept of maximization applied to oneself.  Instead of allowing for flaws, imperfections, and acceptance of life, the perfectionist focuses on every moment where they’re not perfect and treats it as if it were a fatal flaw.

Arthur needed to be perfect.  He needed to be worthy of other’s love – and, like all humans, he wasn’t.

Holding Back the Darkness

One of the skills that Arthur learned was the ability to compartmentalize his life – keeping his pain and despair away from the eyes of others.  While this is indeed a useful skill, as it allows us to temporarily defer deep processing of events until we have the time and capacity, it can be overused.  Compartmentalization isn’t intended to be a permanent coping strategy.

However, an interesting question arises: how and why did Arthur learn this skill?  Did he learn this skill as a coping mechanism so that he could function in a world where he felt such darkness, or was it something else that allowed him to learn this skill?  While we may not know the source, it’s interesting to ponder how people have learned this skill.

Permanent Solution to a Temporary Problem

It’s been said (perhaps quipped), “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem;” but Arthur insisted that life isn’t a temporary problem.  If you’re in constant pain, then life isn’t a temporary problem.  Every moment of pain is an intense torture that seems to last forever – even if it doesn’t last forever in fact.

This sense of pain and the extended time that goes with it cannot be ignored.  It provides a sense of understanding as to why someone would find a permanent solution to what may seem like a temporary problem – to someone on the outside.

Suicidal Belief System

Perhaps one of the most interesting observations was that the people who surrounded Arthur took on his suicidal belief system.  They accepted the “truths” that existed in Arthur’s world without question and became a part of the drama that was playing out in his mind.  It’s good to understand, and understanding suicide may require an Autopsy of a Suicidal Mind.

Stop Suicide This Spring

Each year, for most of us, spring brings light to the world both literally and figuratively.  Those with seasonal affective disorder (SAD) begin to feel their spirits lifting.  Flowers start to bloom, and we see the world reemerge from its winter slumber.  However, unfortunately, we also see a rise in suicide rates.

This is our third year of sharing daily posts about suicide prevention books for the start of spring.  It’s a time when we can share how much work has been done to prevent suicide and create a reminder about both how and why we can make a difference.

For the next two weeks, we’ll post a new book review at 8AM Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4).  This upcoming Monday, we’ll start by laying some groundwork with Shneidman’s Autopsy of a Suicidal Mind, along with several other books that provide different perspectives on suicide research.  The following week, we’ll dive into more nuanced stances, beginning with Humphrey’s controversial Final Exit and ending with Weaver’s A Sadly Troubled History.

Our hope is you’ll be inspired to call one friend to check in on them.

Book Review-On Second Thought: How Ambivalence Shapes Your Life

“Ambivalence is our constant companion.”  It’s my first highlight from On Second Thought: How Ambivalence Shapes Your Life.  This isn’t the first work of William Miller that I’ve read.  He coauthored Motivational Interviewing and Quantum Change.  I’ve learned to trust his insights and recognize that there’s more to the story than we may have thought or been told.  I’ve learned that, sometimes, the power comes from the conflicting thoughts that drive ambivalence.

Indifference, Ignorance, and Ambiguity

It’s important to recognize that ambivalence is a conflicted, contradictory, and vacillating feeling between two, mutually exclusive alternatives.  It’s not indifference, ignorance, or ambiguity.  There’s a real reason to be concerned and an understanding of the situation.  Indifference is not caring.  Ignorance is not knowing – and ambiguity is not knowing enough.  These aren’t the forces that are in operation when ambivalence is present.

When listening to someone, the way that you can detect ambivalence is the word “but.”  It signals the contradiction.  It says that there’s more than one side to consider.

It’s Good

I picked up On Second Thought to support a writing effort for a journal article with a friend.  In that article, we make a key point that, while ambivalence is seen as a bad thing, it’s not.  In the lean manufacturing approach, delaying decisions until the last possible moment is seen as a positive and prevents unnecessary waste.  There’s so much that we know in decision making about the value of rational reviews – and the awareness that we don’t do it enough.  (See Decision Making and Sources of Power.)  Miller states that those with greater emotional ambivalence have been found in research to:

  • Be better informed
  • Read other people’s emotions more accurately
  • Be more creative, perceiving unusual associations and possibilities
  • Offer fair and balanced evaluations
  • Make more accurate judgments
  • Be open to new information and alternative perspectives
  • Experience greater sexual arousal and desire
  • Be less inclined to make impulsive decisions and purchases

The Inner Committee

While we tend to think about our consciousness as one thing, many scholars have a fragmented view.  Daniel Kahneman sees that we have a quick System 1, and a slower, systematic, System 2.  (See Thinking, Fast and Slow.)  Daniel Goleman, in Emotional Intelligence, explains that we have a rational mind and an emotional mind.  Jonathan Haidt expands this to explain the relationship in his Elephant-Rider-Path model.  (See The Happiness Hypothesis and Switch.)

However, the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, as described in No Bad Parts, explains that we have different parts of our consciousness.  It’s not that we have multiple personalities, but rather we have multiple aspects of our personalities that have been fragmented.  Sometimes, we encounter the parts of ourselves that were exiled, and sometimes we encounter their protectors.  They likely have different perspectives than the rest of our consciousness.

Another perspective is that of Steven Reiss in Who Am I?, where he explains that there are 16 basic motivators, and those motivators can come in conflict with one another.  The idea that we shouldn’t be in conflict with ourselves or that we shouldn’t ever come into conflict is fiction.

Kinds of Ambivalence

An interesting aspect of ambivalence that isn’t often discussed is how it is shaped by the positives and negatives of the situation.  Some situations are choices between two mutually-exclusive, positive options.  Others are choosing the lesser of two evils seeking to minimize the pain.  The more complicated kind are those with both positives and negatives.  A depiction of this follows:

When we’re thinking about ambivalence, we’re more frequently thinking of those in the middle.  Consider a job change that requires a move to a new city that you’d like to live in.  Here is a table of positives and negatives of the move (which are opposite for keeping the current job).

Positives Negatives
Better pay, reportedly better hours, an opportunity for career advancement.  Greater challenge. Loss of work friends.  Loss of stability and predictability.  Will be harder.
Get to buy a new house without the existing problems and one that better fits my lifestyle today. Loss of my favorite features of the existing house, like the garden, the proximity to the market, and safety.
Get to live in a city I’ve always wanted to live in.  New adventures. Loss of the community spaces and festivals that I love so much.  Need to find new dentist, physician, hair stylist, etc.

 

Obviously, the above table is simplified and intentionally devoid of specifics.  However, it illustrates that for every positive, there is often some kind of a negative.  To gain something, you must give something else up.  This is at the heart of ambivalence.  The moment the decision is made, the alternative is removed either literally or figuratively.  Jack Canfield in The Success Principles says, “99% is a bitch, 100% is a breeze.”  That is once the decision is truly made, the alternatives disappear from consciousness.

The Internal-External Conflict

Sometimes, the expectations of society conflict with your expectations of yourself.  People with a “stable core” are aware of their beliefs and values and have the courage to stick to them – for the most part. (See Braving the Wilderness for more on the concept of a stable core and Find Your Courage for more on the courage to stick to your convictions.)  This may be a requirement to report something incorrect or a requirement to take advantage of other people (in your view).  We may be tempted to betray our morals through the temptation of going with what others want – but it often comes with great struggle.  (See How Good People Make Tough Choices for moral temptations and Moral Disengagement for how we rationalize it.)

We can see this kind of conflict working both positively – and negatively – in suicide prevention.  In the case of bullying and torment, a person’s self-worth (self-esteem) is under attack.  Ultimately, this changes the weighting for positives and negatives.  Instead of staying alive being associated with happiness and creating good in the world, it’s filled with torment and struggle.  If the person’s self-esteem collapses under this weight, suicide seems like a good idea.

Conversely, another person concerned about you can mean that there is hope that the current circumstances are temporary.  There’s the chance for things to get better based on your work and the support of others.  Instead of the world being an inherently hostile place with no use for you, one can discover the helpful, compassionate responses that are woven into the fabric of humanity.  (See Does Altruism Exist?)

In both cases, external forces “put their finger” on the scales of ambivalence and change the chance that a final decision will be made – to leave suicide behind, or, tragically, to take that exit.

The Ambivalence of Authority

Most people don’t like being told what to do.  It’s similar to Compelled to Control’s revelation that everyone wants to control but no one wants to be controlled.  While not literally and absolutely true, it’s certainly a majority.  Occasionally, you find those, like the story of Ralph as told in Work Redesign, who no longer desire autonomy.  Their spirit has been broken, and now they’ve resigned themselves to a life that exists beyond their control.

Either Or

One of the limitations of our human minds is that we have a propensity towards binary thinking.  That is, we believe that it’s black or it’s white.  We ignore the multitude of variations between the two polarities.  We see it in cognitive constriction that occurs when we’re under stress.  (See Capture.)  We see it in the studies of creative thinking under stress.  (See Drive.)

One of the best things that we can do to improve decision making is to disrupt this binary, dualistic thinking by introducing a third option.  The introduction of the third option opens the possibility to more and reduces the force of direct conflict between the two original options.

Ideal and Actual Self

It was the gap that Carl Rogers was most concerned with.  (See A Way of Being for some of his work.)  It’s the gap between the internal vision of oneself and the actual self that exists in the world.  It’s the same sort of contradiction that Immunity to Change is focused on.  How are there discrepancies between intentions and actions?  Some of that can be ascribed to the tension between the rider and the elephant in Jonathan Haidt’s model of decision-making.  (See The Happiness Hypothesis and Switch for more.)  For some, the gap may be the difference between their status orientation and their current status.  (See Who Am I? and The Normal Personality.)

When we’re looking at the unmade decisions in our life, we must ask whether they remain undecided because we’re ambivalent about them.  We must also consider whether these decisions should remain unmade in their ambivalence – or whether it’s time to make the call.  The truth is that, for most situations, there is no space left for the concept of On Second Thought.

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