Why People Attempt Suicide

Suicide haunts our literature and our culture. It’s the taboo subtext to our successes and our happiness. The reporting of a suicide of any public figure disturbs each of us. Amid our dreams of happiness and achievement lurk our nightmares of self- destruction. Who is not mindful of the potential self-defeating elements within our own personality ?. Each new day contains the threat of failure and assaults by others, but it’s the threat of …

…should be such effective substitutes for conditions of war.” To understand suicide we must understand suffering an psychological pain and various thresholds for enduring it; to treat suicidal people ( and prevent suicide) we must address and then soften and reduce the psychache that drives it. What my research had taught me is that only a small minority of cases of excessive psychological pain result in suicide, but every case of suicide stems from excessive psychache.