Graham King:
Academic book about the causes of suicide. The author is a professor of Psychology, a clinical psychiatrist who works with suicidal people, and a research scientist who studies suicide. What makes this book particularly poignant is that the author's father died by suicide.
Why did I read this? Curiosity, mostly, but a sense of importance too. In the developed world, suicide is the biggest killer of people under 50 (see
rationalfear.com), yet it is poorly understood.
The crux of the author's theory of why people die by suicide, is that it takes three things for that to occur:
- Learned ability to hurt oneself. It turns out it's difficult to kill yourself, both physically and mentally. Millions of years of evolution have bred us to NOT kill ourselves - we cannot naturally tolerate the amount of fear and pain involved. People who actually die are ones who have "gradually beaten back the instinct to survive". They do that by previous suicide attempts, but also by anything that habituates you to fear and pain - past physical abuse, violent crime, substance abuse, prostitution, aggressive sports, and being a physician.
- Feeling of being a burden on loved ones - "I'd be better off dead". In comparing suicide notes from people who died versus those who survived, the author finds those who died word the notes in terms of the benefit to other people. The notes from those who survived are more often about personal anger and frustration.
- Sense of isolation. If he could fund a public service announcement, the author states that he would say something like this: "keep your friends and make new ones - it's strong medicine".
In a concluding chapter, the author answers the question of why he chose to study suicide. The author's lost his father to suicide, and through his work in psychiatric clinics he grew close to many others who tried, and some who succeeded, in dying by suicide. Given that background, I found his words particularly powerful: "Extreme states and conditions, including suicidal crises, have the potential to inform us about human nature in general. The need to belong and to contribute in some way to society seems to be an essential part of what it means to be human".
