Seriousness of Suicide Attempt and Future Risk of Suicide: A Comment on Card’s Paper

According to J.J. Card’s interpretation of her data, lethality of suicide methods & risk were clearly distinct. The present author reconsiders Card’s data & tests a revised hypothesis on a different set of data from unselected samples of 100 suicides & 151 attempts (mean age=46, 45 yrs, respectively). The suicides’ earlier attempts were far more serious than those of the attempters. This finding agrees with the results of earlier studies, but not with those of Card. (32 Ref)