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In the U.S. too there is widespread concern that the manuals may push depressed, momentarily suicidal individuals over the brink. For every suicide in the U.S., 50 to 100 more are estimated to have been attempted and failed. The number of suicides (28,100 recorded in 1981) could increase if society comes to regard self-deliverance as acceptable. Daniel C. Maguire, a Roman Catholic theologian, who has argued for the right of terminally ill patients to take their own lives, is also strongly opposed to the manuals. Says Maguire: "Their publishers must be held accountable for introducing a bias in favor of death." Psychiatrist Hendin warns that people who are basically suicidal tend to want to make suicide seem "socially useful," sometimes striving to turn their own wishes into an acceptable movement. "Elderly people in particular may be made to feel that it is honorable for them to help relieve a burden on society or on their family," says Hendin. "It is a pity society should be able to do something to improve life, it might choose to sanction suicide as an answer to its failures." —By Patricia Blake.
Reported by Joseph J. Kane/Los Angeles and Arthur White/London