Medicine: Suicides & Others

For every one of the 20,000 U.S. citizens who commit suicide each year, five more try it but fail, and dozens threaten it. In an effort to pinpoint the characteristics of suicidal types, two psychologists analyzed the records and personalities of 64 men—half with records of suicidal impulse, half with none—who had been in the Veterans Administration Neuropsychiatric Hospital at Los Angeles. Key findings by Drs. Edwin S. Shneidman and Norman L. Farberow in Public Health Reports:

¶ It is practically impossible to pick out the potential suicide from the details of his...