Suicide Causes and Motivations

Suicide arises because of social disintegration and isolation. Nobody commits suicide because it's in their genetic makeup. Eddie Evans

Looking at overall figures for murder-suicide, suicide and homicide, we find these numbers account for only about 5% of suicides (by homicides' perpetrators).

We then look to suicide as a self-assertion for a phantasized immortality. Many people believe in a here-after and suicide becomes a short-cut. Rather than wait for natural death and cope with all the "slings and arrows" of life, ending it sooner leads to Nirvana or elsewhere. In fact, this sentiment lead to early Christian suicides on a wholesale level. As a result the church found that killing yourself meant taking what God gave. Only God can give and take away; therefore, suicide became a cardinal sin. This ideological approach then came to work quite well for many catholic sects and still does.

Suicide phantasies manipulate others when played out as a con game. Tom Sawyer, for one, shows how to work this game on a community for all that it is worth. What we need to keep in mind here is that some people uses these phantasies verbally for attention. Later they act out these phantasies; meanwhile, we may have grown accustomed to veiled threats for attention.

If a genetic predisposition for suicide exists, we've yet to find it. We can, however, suggest a suicide prone personality disorder with some confidence. We know by experience that most of us endure situations causing hardship, stress, and pain. We know too that a small number of us will not endure these problems and use them as an outlet to suicide. We need to look to an extraordinarily strong aggressive impulse toward the self for answers.

It pays to look for environmental factors instead of focusing our time on genetic and other internal causes. It's not that we're all borne as emotionally "blank tablets" with an equal biological bundle of potentiality; it's that we develop differently from different environments. An orphan in an orphanage will show many characteristics not shown by a child raised in a two parent home. Broken homes play a much larger role, statistically speaking, then non-broken homes when suicide factors become important. Broken homes may include one parent families, families with an absent parent for prolonged periods of time, and similar situations. Aggressive behavior by and between parents represents a "broken home" in many instances.

Proneness to suicide includes more than a history of a broken home, and a broken home does not play as a factor in all suicide prone personalities. Usually we look for social disorganization before or after a suicidal act. Household crisis, loss of a family member, unemployment, residential mobility, and divorce all add to a suicide prone personality. This is to say that childhood's traumatic incidences add to a person's proneness to suicide. We can imagine how a child's lack of a secure relationship with an adult, significant other leads to an inability to create meaningful relationships with other people. Socially isolated people become more prone to suicide later in life. This is one reason why outreach programs to children of broken homes become so important for their later lives. Our prisons are full of such people who went through their early years without significant emotional bonds to mature adults.

Research shows that the majority of people who commit suicide do not seek mental health treatment. Whether they suffer from a gnawing suicidal pain deep within, or live day-to-day with particularly stressful environmental conditions, mental health treatment would have help sort things out, at least.

Then there's the spontaneous suicide (See The Tragic Suicide of 1st Sgt. Jeff McKinney) that seeming occurs without warning. There's not much to be said here for those of us who miss suicide's quiet, mistakable signs, if they exist at all.

We all live with an internalized self. This self becomes an object to our thinking self, the self of decision making, judgment, and perception. It use our object self, this other self by comparing its attitudes, beliefs, and opinions against its object self. When these two, dialectical selves interact without physical or chemical imbalance, we think more plainly, we present ourselves more authentically to society. When drugs, alcohol, or even psychopathology come into play, all sorts of mayhem arises within our internal dialogue of self and self's object-self.

A psychopathological person will have problems arising from many internal directions, chemicals, and so forth. Voices may arise giving directions, hints, even commands. They may increase with age following a lifetime of silence and impromptu appearances. Eventually they may come to command our internal environment. Our object self may become overpowered by these voices, if not in fact become these voices. This remains theoretical. What does not remain theoretical in terms of voices and suicidal behavior are commanding voices.

A person with a psychopathological condition in their early years may grow up listening to voices within their head. Because these voices appear early on they're not questioned as somehow "wrong." Only later when a child realizes that these voices are indeed peculiar to them does a child seek help or choose to ignore these voices. Later in life control over their condition may slow develop; at times this conditions becomes dangerous and overpowering. There's much more information related to this condition. Often psychologists, psychoanalysts, and psychiatrists call this condition "schizophrenia." Here, my approach uses the object-self and its detachment from the self's control. This means "out of control" for a suicidal person.

James turned 39 years old when a host of voices began getting him in his head each morning upon waking. As early as 8 years old he heard similar voices. In those days these voices were quiet, mild, uttering unintelligible sounds. Occasionally one would break through the drone of sounds to utter an unmistakable declaration, a command, a question.

At around 15 years old these voices began to subside. He thought he had control over them and began to think of these voices as friendly agents. At least, he had not considered their commands as anything he really wanted to do. These were less comments then urges, homicidal urges to strike his mother with a large kitchen knife at times. His father led to encounters with a more clear and distinctive urge, almost a verbal command to "kill" his father with his father's hammer. When these urges, unarticulated, babbling thoughts, began to subside, James became relieved.

As a result James broadened his social contacts and his last three years in public school became less threatening. On occasion he would feel an "urge to kill bullies," but he and others would see this as an ordinary childhood response to authoritarian personalities. James continued to arrest his phantom voices and grew more self-confident in his social skills and finally met Sally. Sally and James shared many interest, including piano and horseback riding. They became engaged and soon married. A child joined their lives and all seemed well.

Because James' music skills were above average, and he continued to improve his piano skills into the future, he found work in a music store and became general manager in a short while. After several years in this position his responsibilities grew and conflicts with subordinates became a daily event. Then his problem with voices emerged again. At work he started to hear a voice intermittently. It "just started talking and telling me to slaughter everyone in the music store." Before long this voice was joined by another. Both voices began urging James to kill his wife and child.

He comes from when I go to work the voice in my head starts talking. It tells me to just slaughter everything living in the building. As a child he managed to name these three different voices, although then he could not easily understand what they were saying. Now he knew what they were saying and they were advising him to kill others. Now sleep became a problem for James because nightmares grew in length and detail. He dreamed of broken body parts, bloody death scenes, and haunting episodes played over and over again each night. He knew his mental health had turned into a diseased condition. Try as he might, there were no tools, no ideas to help control his horrible thoughts.

James would soon seek professional help, although his funds for this sort of treatment were non-existent. As a competitive sector employee, he had full responsibility for his health care and that of his family. He did his best to find mental health help that might do some good.

Dr. Drew took James on as a patient and offered him an opportunity to pay as he might. In sessions, Dr. Drew learned from James that he "loved to help people and people like hearing me play piano." While he plays his store's piano and groups of people surround him, he envisions their bodies torn apart and scattered throughout the store. Heads litter counter tops and corpses hang from stringed instruments.

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James would relate that the images in his mind seemed so real that sleep was nearly impossible.

Soon he began hearing new voices from his radio and television. This new source of voices unsettled James as never before. In the middle of dialogue between actors, he believed he could hear one of them order James to kill himself.

James reported these new voices to his therapist on their last meeting. It was their last meeting because within a week James bought a handgun and shot himself while in in music store office.

In this suicide case mental health issues of the deepest and worst sort drove its victim to a terrible end. Finding the cause would take a good deal of speculation, because calling schizophrenia the cause of suicide misses some important issues.

Schizophrenic suicides occur most often in schizophrenia's early development. Impending castrophe begins to command their thinking processes and emotional responses to these ideas. Some suicide cleanup work I've done for young people appears to have had a cause similiar to schizophrenic episodes. Otherwise, there's little else to make of these youthful suicides. We know from our above story that vioces sometimes command some schizophrenic people to commit suicide. They suffer mightily and their lives gyrate out of control.

Abnormal Personalities

Hysterical personality appear more prone to suicide. Frustration and memory loss beget abnormal responses to social situations. Because their conditions leads to an unusual desire for love and approval, they find themselves performing for other's attention and affections. Some learn to place their lives at risk for attention. In doing so their deviant behavior tends to drive others away from them, rather than attract helpful attention. So wouldbe care givers go elsewheere leaving these abnormal, hysterical personalities to their own devices.

Many times researchers look to broken homes for causes of suicide later in children's development, especially among those exposed before age fifteen. A host of threatening, demeaning self-concept elements may become instinguished as children blame themseleves for disrupted homes. They do the same when suicide strikes within their home, too.

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They become inhibited and fail to thrieve emotionally and intellectually. Those who do thrive intellectually continue to suffer emotionally as they maturate into adulthood. As adults their emotional development remains stunted and troublesome for their social relationships. Where goals become attainable they purposely self-inflict disappointment by failing at their tasks. A form of masochism begins to shape their personalities. Traumatic experiences in homes need not include homicides or suicides. Loud, violent clashes between family members easily cause emotional trauma to young, sensitive children. These individuals grow into adulthood at risk for suicide.

Those who grow up as abnormally aggressive and irresponsible adults become excessively suicidal. Unable to relate with others in self-assured, considerate interactions leads to turning their aggression inwards. When we find murder-suicide cleanup conditions, it's clear that homicide perpetrators act out aggressive emotions against their murder victims. Often times during these murder and suicide cleanup tasks broken furniture, broken windows, and even broaken walls show great degrees of violence on perpetrators' agression. These personality disorders we find most often in state prisons.

Alcoholism

Alcoholism accounts as a cause and motivation for suicide in many alcoholic suicides. Alcoholism serves as a form of self-medication for many suicidal alcoholics. Existentially, placing this drug to one's mouth serves as a mother's breast might have served to ease fear and anxiety. In essence, alcoholism serves as a form of chronic suicide. As an escape from reality's punishing emotions and negative feedback loops, alcoholism taken for depression becomes a depressent. Those prone to depression find a snowballing effect as alcohol stokes depressive, emotional fires.

We should understand a clear relationship exists between suicide and alcohol. It's not unusual to complete suicide cleanup and need to remove numerous alcohol bottles from the suicide scene.

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Depression

For certain, whatever personality type one gets labeled, depression accounts for the greatest cause of suicide.

We know that depression leads suicide prone personalities to suicide more often than others personalities not suffering from suicide. We suspect that these same people make suicidal attempts more frequently. Patterns of sucidal behavior develop, but not without environmental inputs. I'm saying that suicide arises because of social disintegration and isolation. Nobody commits suicide because it's in their genetic makeup.

So it's one thing to say that a person has a genetic predisposition to depression. This we might find in a brains faulty serotin levels, which may have a genetic cause. It's a totally different matter to say one commits suicide because of a suicide gene or a genetic predisposition to suicide. Such a gene would never have survived human developement to its present biological state.

Table of contents for this page.

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Suicide Causes and Motivations

Suicides Voices