Comparison of elderly with young-adult suicides Part I: Is there a suicidal personality?
by Ernest Shulman, Ph.D.
Dozens of research reports have contrasted the key factors in elderly versus young suicides. Differences have been emphasized, similarities usually skipped over. An important reason for this disparity is that recognition of the wide diversity of suicidal motivations has shifted attention from what all who kill themselves have in common. In general, researchers seem to have concluded long ago there is no suicidal personality. But such a conclusion may have been premature.
One way to evaluate the commonalities among suicides is a comparison of the issues that distinguish suicides across the age spectrum. A representative example of the studies emphasizing differences between old and young is Conwell, et al (1996). These researchers reported that suicide risk among the clinically depressed increased with age, whereas psychosis and substance abuse were associated more with young patients.
This article uses Bruno Bettelheim, the psychologist, and George Sanders, the actor, to investigate how their personalities interacted with the stresses of old age, resulting in self-inflicted death. The second article (posted separately) article examines young-adult suicides as a contrast. Continue reading››
The Patient-Therapist Relationship in Suicide Loss
by Wayne Hankammer, MA, LPC
Loss is a large factor in suicide. Its impact on the suicidal person is well documented as well as the devastation of loss from the actual suicide. So, loss is a two-way street in suicidology. Suicide, felt as loss, ends life of one and changes forever the lives of others.
This is the story of my experience with death and how this reality changed my life. No stranger to death, I’ve seen it as a cop in accident scenes and elsewhere. While I was the commander for an Air Force Security Police unit one of our sergeants was murdered off-duty. I lost my father and dear friends, too. I also was a suicide hotline worker fielding one very lethal caller once. But nothing compares to the suicide death of a patient of mine who will be referred to here as “Dana.” At the time, I had been working as a therapist for about eight years professionally. The review of Dana’s suicide with staff was painful and necessary, but the impact to me was delayed. Continue reading››
Suicide survivors who themselves took their lives: Charles Boyer, John Berryman, and Ernest Hemingway
by Ernest Shulman, Ph.D.
Imagine parents in a support group for those who suffered an adult child’s death. They are discussing the impulse they have been feeling to kill themselves. They are not exceptional. According to a survey, many bereaved parents of a suicide consider ending their lives: “The urge to be with the child is … as great as … the need to end the pain” (Blank, 1998, p. 83), “exacerbated by the sense the child is not really dead, but awaits rescue. The search for the dead child is shared by most bereaved parents, whether their lost child was very young or an adult” (Blank, 1998, p. 113.) “This grief leaves a permanent void requiring reorganization of parents’ lives. But at first they struggle to cling to their dead children: They become zombies, members of the walking dead” (Blank, 1998, p. 82). Eventually priorities are reordered, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
Charles Boyer (1899-1978), Hollywood actor and once the epitome of the handsome French lover, and his devoted, inseparable English wife, Pat, lost their only child. In 1965, Michael, 21, shot himself. The Boyers never recovered. Continue reading››
Martyr Personalites and Suicide
by Ernest Shulman
Suicide bombers are in the news. The public sees fanatics dying to make a political point. Some people, however, choose death, not for a cause, but in association with a martyr-like lifestyle. Such individuals exist everywhere. Here I discuss three of them: Vincent Van Gogh from Holland, Primo Levi from Italy, and Nikolay Gogol of Russia.
Van Gogh (1853-1890)
Tormented by failures to connect with others, especially women he desired, Van Gogh lived largely a solitary existence. Some of his habits alienated people (Lubin, 1972). For example, he dressed and spoke uncouthly, indifferent to others’ expectations. He always lived in poverty. He distanced himself from teachers and colleagues. Paul Gauguin lived with him in Arles, France, for a few months but Continue reading››