| acute suicidal crisis | A period of brief duration during which an individual is at the peak of self-destructive potential.
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| altruistic suicide | In Durkheim's model, a category of suicide associated with an excessive degree of social connectedness, resulting in the values of the social group predominating over the individual's valuing of his or her own life; also known as institutional suicide.
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| ambivalence | Simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (e.g., attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action.
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| anomie | A sense of confusion, alienation, and uncertainty, due to social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values. In Durkheim's model, such instability and lack of social regulation creates conditions for anomic suicides.
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| attempted suicide | Suicidal behavior associated with a "cry for help" in which the aim of the behavior is to communicate to others how desperate or unhappy the attempter feels.
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| biological markers | In suicidology, biochemical substances such as serotonin and other neurotransmitters whose levels in the brain appear to be correlated with suicidal behavior.
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| chronic suicide | A term coined by Karl Menninger that refers to individuals who harm themselves by means of drugs, alcohol, smoking, reckless living, and other self-destructive behaviors.
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| cluster suicides | The phenomenon of a number of suicides occurring within the same locale, closely related in time, and involving similar methods.
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| crisis suicide | A pattern of suicidal behavior associated with sudden, traumatic change in a person's life.
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| cry for help | The idea that much suicidal behavior involves a drastic action whose goal is not death, but rather to force some change or solve some problem.
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| depression | A state of feeling sad or a mental disorder distinguished by sadness, inactivity, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, and sometimes suicidal thoughts or tendencies.
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| double suicide | A type of suicide pact that generally occurs among older couples who are heavily dependent on each other, isolated from other sources of social support, and in which one or both partners are ill.
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| dyadic event | An event that involves two individuals (e.g., father and son) who have a sociologically and psychologically significant relationship.
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| egoistic suicide | In Durkheim's model, a category of suicide associated with an inadequate sense of social connectedness, causing individuals to feel alienated from others and overly dependent on their own resources.
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| equivocal death | A death that occurs in circumstances that are unclear or questionable as to the mode of death and the deceased's intent. See also psychological autopsy.
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| fatalistic suicide | In Durkheim's model, a category of suicide associated with excessive social restraint and absence of choice, causing individuals to feel there is nowhere to turn and nothing good that can be achieved.
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| hopelessness | A key aspect of depression, especially as it occurs in suicidal thoughts and behavior.
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| intervention | In suicidology, short-term care and treatment of persons who are actively experiencing a suicidal crisis.
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| Level of lethality | Capable of causing death. In suicidology, the progressive nature of suicide intention whereby vague thoughts or fantasies of suicide are followed by concrete actions or steps toward carrying out the suicidal impulse.
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| mass suicide | A special form of cluster suicide in which a large number of individuals die by suicide at the same time and place.
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| middlescence | A term used to describe the sometimes turbulent years of middle adulthood.
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| postvention | (1) In suicidology, assistance given to all survivors of suicide, including those who attempt suicide as well as families, friends, and associates of those who die by suicide. (2) In the aftermath of disasters, aid given to all those affected.
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| psych-ache | A word coined by Edwin Shneidman that refers to unbearable mental pain caused by frustration of a person's most important needs.
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| psychodynamics of suicide | The mental or emotional forces or processes, both conscious and unconscious, occurring within the mind of an individual.
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| psychological autopsy | An investigative technique used by behavioral scientists in cases of equivocal death that involves gathering information about the deceased and circumstances of death to determine the probable mode of death.
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| rational suicide | A type of suicide associated with the desire to gain release from burdensome suffering as, for example, in severely debilitating or terminal illness. A situation in which a physician, at the patient’s request, intentionally helps a patient hasten his or her death by providing lethal drugs or other interventions with the understanding that the patient plans to use them to end his or her life.
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| seppuku | Literally, "ritual disembowelment"; a type of culturally accepted suicide associated with samurai warriors in feudal Japan who sacrificed their lives to maintain the honor or reputation of their lords, also known as hara-kiri.. See also altruistic suicide.
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| social context of suicide | The relationship between the individual and society and the interaction of the individual and the group.
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| subintentioned death | A death in which an individual plays some partial, covert, subliminal, or unconscious role in hastening his or her own demise.
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| suicide notes | A message usually written in the minutes or hours preceding suicide that provides a partial record of the mental state of a suicidal person.
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| suicide prevention | Efforts to eliminate suicidal behavior through education, placing physical barriers in places where suicide is likely to occur, and alleviating the sense of crisis by offering opportunities for the would-be suicide to reassess a painful situation and find a constructive and healthy solution.
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| suttee | A type of suicide occurring among certain castes in India whereby a widow was compelled by prevailing social and religious beliefs to throw herself upon her husband's cremation pyre and immolate herself as an act of devotion.
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| victim-precipitated homicide | A type of suicidal behavior in which an individual deliberately provokes others in ways that lead to their unwitting help in causing his or her own death.
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| Werther effect | The idea that suicide is contagious or has an imitative effect due to the power of suggestion on susceptible individuals; the name comes from Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, which supposedly sparked an epidemic of suicide among young people following its publication in 1774.
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