Ernest Shulman is a Canadian who has lived in New York City for many years. He is a suicide researcher with a Ph.D. in social psychology from the City University of New York. His specialty is why famous people do or do not kill themselves. He is now at work on a book on the causes of suicide, titled “Thirty Famous Suicides.”

Part 2

After three decades of learning . . .

Nevertheless, predispositions toward suicide should always be noted, partly because personal history carries enormous significance. Historical and anthropological studies reveal other aspects of predisposing influences, such as customs, fashions, and contagion. Custom refers to community attitudes, and for suicide it refers to acceptability/unacceptability of self-inflicted death, both in general and specifically in connection with types of people in types of situations. Historians have documented suicide epidemics among conquered peoples, among teenage Native Americans forced into Anglo boarding schools or adoptive families, among child chimney sweeps in eighteenth-century England, and impotent men on their honeymoons in nineteenth-century England, among many examples. Fashions do not mean suicide frequencies, but rather mode of suicide in particular societies and social classes. Contagion has been observed everywhere, simply because human beings, especially teenagers, tend to imitate others in various ways; also, cultural icons, such as Marilyn Monroe, have been found to influence predisposed people to follow their examples in ways of dying. In addition, particular suicide locations exist in many countries, drawing people who intend to kill themselves. The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is the best- known and most fashionable place to take one’s life in the U.S.

Some Pacific island societies, and many in the Arctic, actually endorse suicide as the best way to erase extreme shame. In rural India, despite a legal ban, widows are occasionally encouraged to die on their very recently deceased husbands’ funeral pyres (by burning) — suttee. This is a carryover from past centuries, when upper-caste widows routinely immolated themselves, and widow suicide was widespread throughout the world. In ancient Rome and Greece, suicide was considered normal for various types of people in specific adverse situations.

Such predispositions interact with precipitating factors to induce suicide. It’s an error to put the entire causal weight on a current adversity because, as previously mentioned, few people encountering a severe setback take their lives, although they may often think about doing so. Among general predispositions are personality factors, such as the one occasionally referred to in the literature — pathological narcissism. Another possible trait sometimes found in the suicidal is impulsiveness. But a large body of opinion holds that personality is irrelevant — an idea I find implausible.

A general precipitating issue that I consider important is loss of identity validation. This could be the aftermath of ostracism. I first noticed identity confusion in suicidal callers to the hot-line where I originally volunteered. Identity is not actually lost, but rather the person becomes emotionally isolated, and is without the social acceptance everyone requires. Thus, identity validation is lost.

It may be that every (or almost every) suicide is preceded by loss of a particular form of social acceptance, such that despite all efforts, a person cannot regain identity validation in any acceptable way. Of course, what is acceptable to one individual may be unacceptable to another, and vice versa. Cut off from all emotional ties to others, a person is unlikely to find meaning in living.

Mainstream suicidology has in recent years pioneered the concept of the psychological autopsy — investigation into the mental state of the decedent prior to death. The purpose is to determine the mode of death. Was it by natural causes, accident, homicide, or suicide? Marilyn Monroe’s demise illustrates how the psychological autopsy operates; investigators found her to have been in a state of suicidal despair, and making phone calls after overdosing on pills.

Personally, I prefer the study of the entire life history of a suicidal person, whether or not the individual takes his or her life in the end. This approach allows the study of more personality factors and also what the person did in the past to avoid completing suicide, as opposed to the more limited psychological autopsy.

No significant change in suicide rates has occurred, despite the last forty or more years of research into the causes and prevention of suicide, the formation of hundreds of hot-lines, many organizations for those affected by suicide, millions of dollars in funding for prevention, and the spread of suicide prevention efforts to dozens of foreign countries.

Clearly, new ideas are needed.

=