Community responses following suicide, homicide, and other deaths: the perspective of potential comforters

To determine whether actual responses of potential comforters in the community differ according to cause of death, 83 college students participated in a structured, individual interview. They were asked demographic questions about themselves, the bereaved, and the deceased, and then about various aspects of how they, and others in the community, responded to the death. Students were grouped by their reports of the cause of death (suicide, homicide, accident, natural anticipated death, or natural unanticipated death). When the death was by suicide or homicide, others were perceived as relatively less supportive of the bereaved person. When the death was by suicide, respondents themselves tended more to blame the bereaved person. When the death was by homicide, the bereaved person was perceived as reacting relatively worse. Potential comforters were relatively more shocked when the death was by homicide or accident.     

Reasons for Living Following Success and Failure in Suicidal and Nonsuicidal College Students1

To see if suicide ideators responded differently than nonideators after success or failure experiences, 61 college students who were relatively high or low ideators participated in a computer task on which half got bogus success feedback, the other half got bogus failure feedback. Both groups then completed the Reasons for Living Inventory (RFL). Two (High versus Low Suicide) X 2 (Success or Failure) analyses indicated main effects for suicide on overall RFL and four of the six RFL subscales. Although there were no main effects for success versus failure, an interaction indicated that, in the failure condition, low suicidal subjects were significantly higher than high suicidal subjects in overall reasons for living. Results suggest that suicidal individuals may be vulnerable to failure, and may need interventions to help them avoid potential failure or to bolster their coping mechanisms.