Table 3: Shneidman’s Ten Commonalities of Suicide Common Traits of Suicide
Further Explanation
1. Purpose of suicide is to seek a solution. 2. Goal of suicide is the cessation of consciousness. 3. Stimulus for suicide is unbearable psychological pain (i.e., psychache). 4. Stressor in suicide is frustrated psychological needs.
Suicidal individuals see death as the answer to a problem that is likely causing them intense suffering. Ending consciousness is the escape from an individual’s unendurable pain. Individuals view death as a way out of the problem and the only way for pain to stop.
Suicide is the movement away from a person’s intolerable pain and anguish.
Suicide originates from the frustration of an individual’s unmet needs for attachment and affiliation. The underlying feeling in suicidal individuals is that they cannot be helped; therefore, they lose hope in life. When people are suicidal, they are ambivalent toward both life and death. They desire to die and simultaneously to be rescued. Suicide is the answer to a mind that begins to lose perspective of all other options as their thinking becomes narrowed.
5. Emotion in suicide is
hopelessness-helplessness.
6. Cognitive state in suicide is ambivalence. 7. Perceptual state in suicide is constriction.
8. Action in suicide is escape.
Suicide is an act of departure from the reality of an individual’s mental anguish.
9. Interpersonal act in suicide is communication of intent. 10. Pattern in suicide is consistency of lifelong coping styles.
Most suicidal individuals communicate their intentions, signals of distress, and cries for intervention. People who die by suicide typically have previously demonstrated a pattern of self- destructive coping behaviors.
Note . Adapted from The Suicidal Mind by E. Shneidman, 1996 (New York: Oxford University Press). Joiner’s interpersonal theory of suicide
Perhaps the most empirically examined and comprehensive model is Dr. Thomas Joiner’s interpersonal theory of suicide (IPTS; Joiner, 2005; Van Orden et al., 2010; Ma, Batterham, Calear, & Han, 2016). To date, literally hundreds of studies have been published testing and exploring the theory, providing an evidence base that rivals the best models across all of psychological science. As previously established, the desire for death is a common theme across numerous other historical theories of suicide. Based on ample empirical support, Joiner’s theory summarizes the desire to die through two key constructs: perceived burdensomeness and failed belongingness: ● Perceived burdensomeness: Is the individual’s belief that not only is he or she flawed in some capacity but that his or her existence burdens friends and family. While the suicidal individual believes this calculation to be correct, it is a potentially fatal misconception. Perceived burdensomeness occurs when a person believes his death is worth more than his life to others (Teismann, Forkmann, Rath, Glaesmer, & Margraf, 2016). ● Failed belongingness: Is the sense that the individual is alienated from his or her significant others. When this feeling is combined with perceived burdensomeness, Joiner’s theory suggests that all ties to life are cut off and the desire for death becomes seen as an option. Thwarted belongingness results when the basic human need of connection to others (Hom, Chu, Schneider, Lim, Hirsch, Gutierrez, & Joiner, 2017), is not met. According to the IPTS, the acquired capability for suicide is believed to be one of three proximal, jointly necessary, and jointly sufficient causes that must be present before a person will die by suicide; the other two factors are perceived burdensomeness and low (or thwarted) belongingness . Acquired capability for suicide is a construct made up of both pain tolerance and fearlessness about death. Specifically, according to the IPTS, humans have been evolutionarily designed to fear dying, and thus, in order to overcome this fear and make a lethal suicide attempt, a person must become accustomed to
the fear and pain involved in dying. The theory further posits that the capability for suicide is developed over time with repeated exposure to pain (e.g., childhood abuse, injuries) and provocative events (e.g., being in combat, shooting a gun, bungee jumping). The acquired capability for suicide is believed to be elevated primarily through behaviors and physical experiences and has been found to be in part genetically determined (Rimkevicience, Hawgood, O’Gorman, & De Leo, 2017). In many ways it is the acquired capability component that is the distinguishing feature to Joiner’s theory, fundamentally separating it from previous theories on suicide. Notably, Chu and colleagues (2017) found evidence for the distinctiveness of the acquired capability for suicide from suicidal ideation. In other words, one may have acquired the capability for suicide, but have no suicidal desire. Conversely, one may have suicidal desire, but lack the capability to die by suicide. However, having elevated acquired capability in conjunction with perceived burdensomeness and low belongingness is believed to put an individual at risk for death by suicide. Joiner’s theory posits that death by suicide is incumbent on this third factor: acquired capability, which occurs when an individual has increased exposure to pain, either from self-injury or other- injury, and thereby habituates to stimuli associated with death. The theory suggests that those with previous suicide attempts (or other painful experiences) habituate to pain more than others and have higher tolerances of pain and fear, and are therefore more capable of increased self-destructive behaviors. Although there may be many individuals with either a desire to die or acquired capability, circumstances in which both elements are present in a dangerous overlap occur less frequently (Chu et al., 2017). Most theoretical models of suicide have not specifically addressed the issue of understanding youth suicide. However, Joiner’s IPTS model is one of the few that has been considered in understanding youth suicide, and an increasing number of studies are published on the theory in youth populations
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