Social Support and Suicidal Behavior (IN: Current Issues of Suicidology, ed. by H J Moller, A Schmidtke & R Welz)

In this study, people who had attempted suicide & been treated by an emergency department & a control group were asked about their social support network. The authors found that the number of persons in regular contact with the attempters was signficantly fewer than for controls. This was particularly evident in friends & acquaintances – controls had twice as many as suicide attempters. Controls also had slightly more contacts to family members, but the qualitative aspects were rated lower. (VM)