Completed suicide: a taxonomic analysis of clinical and social data

Abstract

SynopsisA post mortem enquiry has been made into the social family and clinical circumstances of 50 individuals who, according to a coroner's verdict, killed themselves in Brighton. A dimensional analysis of the 123 variables thus collected suggested the possibility of three distinct types of suicide: ‘depressive suicide’, ‘sociopathic suicide’ and ‘physical illness suicide’. The reliability of this typology has been checked by the analysis of 55 selected variables for a total of 193 cases considered by the same coroner. A cluster analysis has confirmed that the data contain at least three independent types of suicide. Some implications for the prevention of suicide are discussed.

The Psychopathology of Suicide in the North Western Peloponnesus

“…The former tended to be rather alienated individuals with a disin tegrated social life and many of them had multiple admissions to several psychiatric hospitals presenting a higher incidence of suicidal attempts. The number of attempts seems relatively low in the present study, when compared with other studies [1,7,15,17], even though such results have been re ported with similar percentages [3,4]. The reason for the low number of suicidal at tempts may be due to the fact that coroners most likely registered only serious attempts in need of hospitalization.…”

“…These had oc curred a few days prior to the successful sui cide and the methods used could have been fatal to the subjects. It is worth noting that in most successful suicides violent means (hanging, jumping from heights, shooting, drowning) were used, despite the widely ac cepted view that psychiatric patients use mainly nonviolent or passive methods for committing suicide, particularly intoxica tion by drug overdoses [ 1,3,10,12,13]. The fact that psychiatric patients used mostly violent methods suggests that they were so desperate that any intervention would have been of little avail.…”

Suicide by Cop: Clinical Risks and Subtypes

“…Cluster analysis supported the separation of individual suicides into four discrete and independent groups; the three aforementioned types and a residual category that did not score highly on any of the three principal components (Bagley, Jacobson, & Rehin, 1976). O'Connor, Sheehy, and O'Connor (1999) also conducted a cluster analysis of 142 cases of suicide and derived three clusters.…”

“…In one of the earliest suicide typology studies, Bagley, Jacobson, and Rehin (1976) used principal component analysis to derive three typologies: 1) Depressive Suicide, characterized by clinical depression and longstanding psychiatric problems, 2) Sociopathic Suicide, characterized by a history of violent and criminal behavior, and 3) Physical Illness Suicide, characterized by chronic physical pain, illness, and handicap. Cluster analysis supported the separation of individual suicides into four discrete and independent groups; the three aforementioned types and a residual category that did not score highly on any of the three principal components (Bagley, Jacobson, & Rehin, 1976).…”

A study of suicides of older people in Sydney

“…Bagley et al (1976) proposed three types: depressive, sociopathic, and suicide associated with physical illness. O'Connor et al (1999), noting that several research groups had used cluster analysis to identify different sub-types of parasuicidal behaviour, used this technique to analyse data from coroner's ®les concerning 142 suicides at mean age 41 years.…”