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To: streetpreacher
I don't think suicide is a decision made in the intellect

Quite right. Ed Schneidman the first and foremost suicidologist (who also incidentally studied suicide among the gifted) demonstrated convincingly that all this pawing through the debris looking for proximate causes is bunk. There is no demographic or historical causation which yields anywhere near useful explanatory or predictive value.

Suicide occurs when, against a background of enduring emotional pain, some precipitating event triggers action. And no one can predict reliably what that will be, or what might be the source of the pain. The person usually doesn't talk about it, or let on. We know mental illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia are risk factors but even with them the false positives are prohibitively large.

It would therefore especially behoove those who don't even know the person to forgo the luxury of pointless judgmentalism and post-mortem speculations. It is a tragedy for the loved ones and that is the main lasting consequence.

181 posted on 06/24/2007 7:45:18 AM PDT by hinckley buzzard
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To: hinckley buzzard; Happygal
It would therefore especially behoove those who don't even know the person to forgo the luxury of pointless judgmentalism and post-mortem speculations. It is a tragedy for the loved ones and that is the main lasting consequence.

The long and the short of it; thank you for your insight.

187 posted on 06/24/2007 8:46:13 AM PDT by Madame Dufarge
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