Survivors of suicide do grieve differently: empirical support for a common sense proposition.

Previous empirical investigations have produced mixed results on the question of whether mode of death differentially affects grief. To further investigate the influence of suicide on grief, 350 previously bereaved university students completed a questionnaire package consisting of several standardized measures. Participants were separated into four groups based on the mode of death experienced as either survivors of suicide (n = 34), accident (n = 57), unanticipated natural (n = 102), or anticipated natural (n = 157) deaths. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that suicide survivors, compared against the other groups, experienced more frequent feelings of rejection, responsibility, "unique" reactions, and more total grief reactions. Trends indicating increased levels of shame and perceived stigmatization were also evident. Aggregate factors of death "naturalness" and "expectedness" showed less influence than mode of death in influencing grief. Overall, results support previous clinical and research findings and intuitive logic in demonstrating that the grief experienced by suicide survivors includes elements that are less frequently seen in the case of nonsuicidal deaths.     

Suicide as Social Logic

Although suicide is not viewed as a mental disorder per se, it is viewed by many if not most clinicians, researchers, and lay people as a real or natural symptom of depression. It is at least most typically seen as the unfortunate, severe, yet logical end result of a chain of negative self-appraisals, negative events, and hopelessness. Extending an approach articulated by the early French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, in this paper I argue that suicide is merely an idea, albeit a very bad one, having more in common with societal beliefs and norms regarding such things as divorce, abortion, sex, politics, consumer behavior, and fashion. I make a sharp contrast between perturbation and lethality, concepts central to Edwin S. Shneidman's theory of suicide. Evidence supportive of suicide as an idea is discussed based on what we are learning from the study of history and culture, and about contagion/cluster phenomena, media/communication, and choice of method. It is suggested that certain individuals are more vulnerable to incorporate the idea and act of suicide into their concepts of self, based on the same principles by which ideas are spread throughout society. Just as suicide impacts on society, so does society impact on suicide.     

Unikkaartuit: Meanings of Well-Being, Unhappiness, Health, and Community Change Among Inuit in Nunavut, Canada

Suicide among young Inuit in the Canadian Arctic is at an epidemic level. In order to understand the distress and well-being experienced in Inuit communities, a first step in understanding collective suicide, this qualitative study was designed. Fifty Inuit were interviewed in two Inuit communities in Nunavut, Canada, and questionnaires asking the same questions were given to 66 high school and college students. The areas of life investigated here were happiness and wellbeing, unhappiness, healing, and community and personal change. Three themes emerged as central to well-being: the family, talking/communication, and traditional Inuit cultural values and practices. The absence of these factors were most closely associated with unhappiness. Narratives about community and personal change were primarily about family, intergenerational segregation, an increasing population, more trouble in romantic relationships among youth, drug use, and poverty. Change over time was viewed primarily as negative. Discontinuity of kinship structure and function appears to be the most harmful effect of the internal colonialism imposed by the Canadian government in the 1950s and 1960s. Directions toward community control and action are encouraging, and are highlighted. Inuit community action toward suicide prevention and community wellness is part of a larger movement of Indigenous self-determination.     

Limits of end-state planning

The end-state comfort effect is the tendency to use an uncomfortable initial grasp posture for object manipulation if this leads to a comfortable final posture. Many studies have replicated the end-state comfort effect across a range of tasks and conditions. However, these tasks had in common that they involved relatively simple movements, such as picking up a dowel or sliding a pan from one place to another. Here we asked whether the end-state comfort effect extends to more complex tasks. We asked participants to grasp a transparent bowl and move the bowl to an instructed location, positioning it in an instructed orientation. We either found an initial-state comfort effect or equal degrees of comfort for end-grasps and start-grasps depending on task instructions. The end-state comfort effect was not consistently observed. The results suggest that the end-state comfort effect may be restricted to relatively simple grasping movements.     

Living Conditions and Psychological Distress in Latino Migrant Day Laborers: The Role of Cultural and Community Protective Factors

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between typically difficult living conditions and psychological distress in Latino migrant day laborers (LMDLs), with attention to the potentially protective roles of contact with family in country of origin (i.e., communication, sending money, etc.), availability of local culture (i.e., food, music, people from one's country of origin), and utilization of community resources perceived to be culturally competent (i.e., services that are respectful, able to serve Latinos, able to solve problems, in Spanish, etc.). Participants were 344 LMDLs surveyed in the San Francisco Bay Area. As hypothesized: (a) difficult living conditions were related to depression, anxiety, and desesperación [desperation], the latter a popular Latino idiom of psychological distress recently validated on LMDLs; (b) contact with family moderated the relation between difficult living conditions and depression and desesperación but not anxiety and (c) access to local culture, and utilization of community resources, mediated the relation between difficult living conditions and depression and desesperación but not anxiety. Implications for intervening at local and larger levels in order to provide some protection against distress built into the LMDL experience in the United States are discussed.     

Authors and publication practices

Although authors are usually considered to be the main perpetrators of research and publication misconduct, any person involved in the process has the potential to offend. Editors may breach ethical standards particularly with respect to conflicts of interest. In the same way that authors are now required to declare competing interests, notably commercial affiliations, financial interests and personal connections, so must editors. Editors can influence the chances of acceptance or rejection of a paper by reviewer selection. Reviewers should also be ready to disclose conflicts of interest. They must ensure that their reviews are evidence based and free from destructive criticism driven by self interest. It seems likely that ultimately we will progressively move towards 'open' peer review in which both the authors and the reviewers are known to each other. There is an urgent need for increased transparency of the relationship between editors and owners. The events of the last few years indicate that unless this interface is fully understood by all parties, conflicts may arise. There is also a need for a radical overhaul in the relationship between journals, journal editors and the biomedical industry. It is now increasingly accepted that all clinical trials should be registered in a centrally held database and that protocols should include the primary and secondary outcome measures and the intended approach to data analysis thereby avoiding opportunistic post hoc analyses. However, the even more radical proposal that journals should cease to publish clinical trials sponsored by industry deserves wider debate.     

Problem Solving,Stress, and Coping in Adolescent Suicide Attempts

Twenty adolescents who had made suicide attempts were compared with 20 nonpsychiatric control subjects on measures of problem solving, stress, and coping. The suicidal group did not show evidence of “rigid” thinking or of deficits in the ability to generate solutions to standardized interpersonal problems. However, they did report recent histories of more severe life stress and had inaccurate appraisal of the extent to which stressful events could be controlled. Although suicidal patients were able to generate as many adaptive strategies as control subjects for coping with their own most severe recent real-life stressor, they actually used fewer. They were also more likely to identify maladaptive behaviors as ways of coping. These findings support a transactional model of adolescent suicidal behavior, whereby inaccuracies in the appraisal aspects of problem solving (but not in the solution-generation aspects) in the face of high life stress lead to a reduction in the use of adaptive efforts to cope.