Integrating research from multiple disciplines, this text provides a comprehensive perspective on suicide and examines what works in prevention and intervention. The author is a pioneering researcher and clinician who addresses the classification, prevalence, and assessment of suicide and self-destructive behaviors and explores risk factors at multiple levels, from demographic variables, personality traits, psychiatric diagnoses, and neurobiological factors to the social and cultural context. Student-friendly features include text boxes that dive deeply into specific issues, instructive figures and tables, thought-provoking clinical cases, and engaging examples from literature and popular culture. The text reviews medical and psychosocial treatment and prevention approaches, discusses ways to help those bereaved by suicide, and considers issues of professional liability.
1. Introduction to Suicidology 2. The Theoretical Construction of Suicidology II. Data, Research, Assessment 3. Grounding Suicidology in Empirical Evidence 4. Measurement: Risk Factors and Risk Assessment III. Sociodemographic Issues 5. Age, Lifespan, and Suicidal Careers 6. A Phallocentric Focus: Sex, Gender, and Marital Status 7. Social versus Individual Facts: Social Relations, Work, and the Economy 8. International Variation in Suicide 9. Who Makes Suicide Attempts, How, and What Do Suicide Notes Say about Them? IV. Major Mental Disorders, Biology, Neurobiology 10. The Most Important Suicide Risk Factor: Mental Disorder? 11. Major Depression: Undiagnosed and Untreated 12. Bipolar Disorder: A Suicidogenic Cycle of Despair 13. Schizophrenia: Bizarre and Psychotic Suicides 14. Personality Disorders: Borderline, Antisocial, and Obsessive-Compulsive Personalities 15. The Second Most Important Suicide Risk Factor: Alcoholism and Other Substance Abuse 16. Suicidal Biogenics of the Brain: Biology, Genetics, and Neurobiology V. Religion, Culture, History, Ethics 17. God, the Afterlife, Religion, and Culture 18. How Did Suicide Evolve?: Suicide in History and Art 19. Is Suicide Ever the Right Thing to Do?: Ethical Issues, Euthanasia, and Rational Suicide VI. Special Topics 20. Suicide in the Military: War, Aggression, and PTSD 21. Murder-Suicide: Why Take Someone with You? 22. Jail and Prison Suicides: Confinement, Rage, and Target Reduction VII. Treatment and Prevention 23. What Are We Going to Do about Suicide?: Treatment and Intervention I. Pharmacology 24. What Are We Going to do about Suicide?: Treatment and Intervention II. Psychotherapy 25. Prevention: Can Suicides Be Stopped or Reduced? 26. Postvention and Survivors: Death May Solve the Suicide's Problems, but What about Those Left Behind? 27. Forensic Suicidology: A Tort Is the Oldest Antidepressant VIII. Summary and Conclusions 28. What Have We Learned? Epilogue References
