Recent Life Events and Suicide Attempts (IN: Current Issues of Suicidology, ed. by H J Moller, A Schmidtke & R Welz)

This study compared the life events of suicide attempters, depressives, schizophrenics & controls. The authors found that attempters reported significantly more life events in the 2 to 6 month period before their attempts compared to controls, but they found no marked peak of events in the month prior to the attempt, as others have reported. The authors also discovered that events in intimate relationships, employment, legal problems may act as a stimulus variable. (VM)