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There have been few reports on the effect of suicide death on family members' attitudes toward suicide. In order to estimate the extent to which suicide death affects attitudes toward suicide among family members of suicides, data of 264 informants from a case-control psychological autopsy study were analyzed. The results showed that there were no significant differences in attitudes toward suicide, measured by the General Social Survey's (GSS) four questions, between informants of suicides and informants of living controls, between family members of suicides and family members of living controls, or between family members of suicides and non-family members of suicides. Our findings did not support the hypothesis that suicide death affects the attitudes toward suicide in suicides' family members. However, some factors were found to be related to the pro-suicide attitudes measured by the four questions included in the GSS. doi: 10.2190/OM.60.4.d

The effect of any death spreads out to many people. Deaths that occur in the workplace need to be handled with particular care given that the bereaved family as well as work colleagues will have been affected. Death by suicide or situations when an employee becomes suicidal can challenge even the most experienced manager. This article aims to raise some of the issues surrounding sudden death and suicide at work and suggests a number of ways that an organization can respond to such challenges.

The objective of this study was to identify the impact of a patient's suicide on psychiatrists in Thailand. A confidential coded postal questionnaire survey was sent to 320 eligible psychiatrists; with a response rate of 52.18%). The results showed that 94 (56.28%) of responding psychiatrists had a patient die by suicide, consistent with high rates found in similar large-scale studies in the United States and United Kingdom. Less than half (41.5%) of patients had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, 33 % had a depressive disorder, and the others had a wide array of diagnoses. More than 50% of psychiatrists reported personally experiencing sadness, depression, hopelessness, and guilt; 74.5% reported professional reactions, most frequently a review of their practice (93.4% reported being more aggressive in assessment of suicidality). Respondents were diverse in their postvention; 90% of Thai psychiatrists reported that working through with colleagues was most helpful. Family and friends helped. A majority (72.4%) of psychiatrists prayed or did 'merit' for the dead patient; 86.8% found it helpful. This finding suggests that cultural sensitivity may be needed to understand the impact of suicide on psychiatrists but also to its response.

The effect of art on suicide risk has been a neglected topic in suicidology. The present article focuses on what is probably the best known song concerning suicide, Gloomy Sunday, the 'Hungarian suicide song.' An analysis of historical sources suggests that the song was believed to trigger suicides. It was, for example, banned by the BBC in England until 2002. The alleged increase in suicides in the 1930s associated with the playing of the song may be attributed to audience mood, especially the presence of a large number of depressed persons as a result of the Great Depression. The influence of music on suicide may be contingent on societal, social, and individual conditions, such as economic recessions, membership in musical subcultures, and psychiatric disturbance. Further research is needed on art forms, such as feature films, paintings, novels, and music that portray suicides in order to identify the conditions under which the triggering of suicides occurs.

Our first goal is to link empirical measures of three theoretical explanations of marital status differences to the variation in male and female standardized suicide difference coefficients SSDCs in 12 developed countries, circa 1960. We include predictors of Durkheim's social integration hypothesis, Gibbs and Martin's concept of marital status integration, and norms on suicide acceptability. All three are significantly related to variation in male and female SSDCs. The second goal is to examine how our empirical indicators impact age-specific differences in the male minus female SSDC--differences that vary by age in all 12 of our study populations. The strongest predictor of these differences is the male minus female difference in the percent married.

Client suicide is often an extraordinarily painful process for clinicians, especially those still in training. Given their training status, supervisees may look to their graduate programs and supervisors for guidance and support when such an event occurs. This study qualitatively examined the experiences of 13 prelicensure doctoral supervisees regarding their client's suicide. Findings suggest that these supervisees received minimal graduate training about suicide and that support from others, including supervisors, helped them cope with their client's death. Supervisors are advised to normalize and process supervisees' experiences of client suicide. Implications for training and practice are discussed. Keywords: client suicide, supervision, training

There is a slim, slowly emerging literature addressing the impact of parent suicide upon children. By contrast with some other potentially pathogenic contexts for children (e.g., physical abuse), there has been virtually no exploration of the effect of a parent's suicide upon his or her children's parenting, that is, the transmission into a third generation of the sequelae of the original parent suicide. Based primarily on clinical and preventive work with adult 'children of suicide' and their families, this paper begins to map some of the paths, direct and transparent or subterranean and disguised, that such experiences take into further generations. Patterns described include massive indulgence, communication of dire expectations, vicissitudes of family secrets, life-blanching living down the shame, defensive barriers against depressive affects, as well as dread-filled avoidance of producing a third generation.

Using state data from 1992 and 2000 instead of I975, the author both confirmed and extended Lester's 1987 study. Like Lester's study, the present replication showed for 1992 (but not 2000) that the more people drinking fluoridated water, the lower the rates of crude and age-adjusted suicide (partial rs: -.25 and -.25, respectively). Crude and age-adjusted rates of homicide in 1992 and 2000 did not change with the fluoridation of public water. Effective interpretation requires more study.

The death of two soldiers, namely, Spc. Karl Herrick and Pvt. Ibrahim Hasan, in the same way on the railroad tracks is described. The death of both was termed as suicide, and both had officers over them who failed to protect them from unfair treatment due to the racial harassment, as investigated by the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Command.

Although suicide rates among older Americans have been relatively stable over the past 40 years, the incidence of suicide among 15- to 19-year-olds has quadrupled. Is this linked to the [...]

Samuel Johnson was unequivocal about the 'horrid crime of destroying one's self'. To the faithful, it is a sin; as Walter Scott put it, 'Despair is treason towards man, / [...]