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posted by chromas on Monday July 29 2019, @07:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the 10-out-of-10-who-succeed-at-suicide-will-not-attempt-it-again dept.

Attempters' Longterm Survival

Nine out of ten people who attempt suicide and survive will not go on to die by suicide at a later date. This has been well-established in the suicidology literature. A literature review summarized 90 studies that have followed over time people who have made suicide attempts that resulted in medical care. Approximately 7% (range: 5-11%) of attempters eventually died by suicide, approximately 23% reattempted nonfatally, and 70% had no further attempts.

Even studies that focused on medically serious attempts–such as people who jumped in front of a train–and studies that followed attempters for many decades found similarly low suicide completion rates. At least one study, published after the 90-study review, found a slightly higher completion rate. This was a 37-year follow-up of self-poisoners in Finland that found an eventual completion rate of 13%.

This relatively good long-term survival rate is consistent with the observation that suicidal crises are often short-lived, even if there may be underylying, more chronic risk factors present that give rise to these crises.


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 29 2019, @03:00PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 29 2019, @03:00PM (#872657) Journal

    Googling for whether it is legal to commit suicide gives interesting results.

    Like this . . . [wikipedia.org]

    The Suicide Act 1961 (9 & 10 Eliz 2 c 60) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It decriminalised the act of suicide in England and Wales so that those who failed in the attempt to kill themselves would no longer be prosecuted.

    A law against committing suicide would seem pointless.

    1. If they succeed, the prosecution of this crime suddenly becomes more complex.

    2. If they fail, there is a 90 % chance they will not attempt to re-offend. But this time they did not succeed, and thus have not broken the law. In the above quotation, the illegal act was the attempt at suicide rather than the successful accomplishment of it. So it could be prosecuted, thus providing incentive to get it right the first time.

    Then there is the thorny question of assisting someone in this endeavor. When this happen, the odds of success would seem to go to nearly 100 %. But the assistant remains behind to be prosecuted. [wikipedia.org]

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