Completed Suicides: Correlates of Choice of Method

Abstract

The relationship between social and psychological correlates of youthful suicide victims and methods of lethality is examined. Data on those who commit suicide are also used to explore the suicide intent hypothesis, and the findings are discussed in light of recent claims that choice of method of lethality is useful for understanding completed suicide. The results suggest that a wide range of factors may be related to youthful intent and suicidal behavior, but only minor differences are observed among a single cohort of committers.

Are Suicide Note Writers Representative of All Suicides? Analysis of the National Violent Death Reporting System

“…Previous work based in the United States has generally found that persons leaving suicide notes are more similar than different from the population of persons not leaving suicide notes (Beck et al., ; Callanan & Davis, ; Cohen & Fiedler, ; Omalu et al., ; Peck, ; Shneidman & Farberow, ; Tewksbury et al., ; Tuckman et al., ). This work can be used to legitimate the generalization of findings from suicide note analysis to the population of all suicides (Callanan & Davis, ; Shneidman & Farberow, ; Shneidman & Farberow, ).…”

“…Most studies omit the study of psychiatric variables (Cohen & Fiedler, ; Omalu et al., ; Peck, ; Tewksbury et al., ). The presence of current treatment for a mental problem is largely unstudied in US literature.…”

“…The NVDRS contains a large number of demographic, social, and psychiatric variables, as well as information on method of suicide. Method of suicide often predicts the presence of a note (e.g., Cohen & Fiedler, ; Peck, ). The present wide range of constructs allows for the generation of a more fully specified model than in most previous research.…”

Dimensions of Suicide: Perceptions of Lethality, Time, and Agony

“…Epidemiological studies of suicide have relied upon death certificate information to relate factors such as age, gender, and ethnicity to frequency of completed suicides (Robins & Kulbek, 1988). Preferred suicide methods have been found to vary by gender, age, and ethnicity (Chipuer & von Eye, 1989;Peck, 1986;Stafford & Weisheit, 1988).…”

“…Investigations of suicide methods have addressed lethality in an effort to link intent to die with the medical probability that a given method will cause death (Peck, 1986). The lethality of commonly used methods has been defined either on the basis of the actual physiological processes or degree of bodily damage created by a given method, or by comparing methods used in completed suicides against those employed in thwarted attempts.…”