A sociobiological extension of the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide

Recently, our group proposed an account of human suicide (Joiner, Hom, Hagan, & Silva, 2016) that integrates two lines of thought and scholarship: one on self-sacrificial behavior that occurs across species in nature, and the other on the interpersonal theory of suicide’s attempt to explain human suicide (Joiner, 2005; Van Orden et al., 2010). Here, we briefly summarize these two strands of intellectual endeavor, discuss their integration, and draw out conceptual and clinical implications thereof.