Attempted suicide has been described as the prime emergency of general practice. Although this may represent a slightly exaggerated claim, the present writers have certainly found attempted suicide to be a frequent reason for the referral of patients to the psychiatric department of a general hospital. The expression “attempted suicide” is usually taken to refer to an unsuccessful attempt to kill oneself: yet such a description is often somewhat inappropriate to describe a dramatic episode of behaviour, during which an assault upon the self occurs as the result of a mood of despair or rage. Death may not be consciously sought and it is more satisfactory to define attempted suicide as a non-fatal act of self-damage.
This paper is based on a year's psychotherapeutic experience during 1950–51 in a well-known psychiatric clinic in America.The psychiatric patient in the United States, like his brother and sister elsewhere, may be regarded from one viewpoint as a product of his culture. It has been said that the American scene is compounded of an unorganized mass of atypicalities; but, in fact, certain broad cultural trends are discernible. A brief look at the background of social and family patterns will help to give some insight into the psychic apparatus of the sick as well as the healthy person.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.