Skip to main content Skip to Search Box

Definition: suicide from The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology
1

A person who intentionally kills himself or herself.

2

The act of taking one's life. Émile Durkheim, the first to study suicide systematically, distinguished three different types, depending on what motivates the act of self-destruction: altruistic, anomic and egoistic; definitions of each are found below.


Suicide

From Black's Medical Dictionary, 43rd Edition
Self-destruction as an intentional act. Attempted suicide is when death does not take place, despite an attempt by the person concerned to kill him or herself; parasuicide is the term describing an attempt at suicide that is really an act to draw attention to the perceived problems of the individual involved. Although suicide rates in the UK have fallen over the last 15 years, it remains a serious public health problem. Worldwide, suicide is the second major cause of death (after tuberculosis) for women between the ages of 15 and 44, and the fourth major killer of men in the same age-group (after traffic accidents, tuberculosis and violence). The risk of suicide rises sharply in old age. Globally, there are estimated to be between ten and 25 suicide attempts for each completed suicide. In the United Kingdom, around 6,000 suicides are reported annually in the UK, of which approximately 75 per cent are by men. The peak age range for suicide in men is 45–49, while in women it is 50–54. …
8,545 results

Full text Article The curious relationship between altitude and suicide (Mar. 2018)

From The Conversation: An Independent Source of Analysis from Academic Researchers
The curious relationship between altitude and suicide
Suicide is one of the top 10 causes of death in the U.S. In the next 20 years, it’s expected to cause more than 2 million deaths per year worldwide, ranking 14th in the world as a cause of death. There are many factors known to affect an individual’s risk for suicide. For example, people who are…
| 721 words , 1 image
Key concepts:

Full text Article suicide

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
A profoundly disturbing phenomenon that raises important ethical and practical issues. How many people take their own lives? Why do they do it? What can sociology teach us about this phenomenon and how can we reduce it? The World Heath Organization (WHO) has estimated that in the year 2000…
| 1,023 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Suicide

From World of Criminal Justice, Gale
Suicide is the taking of one’s own life with conscious intent . The overwhelming majority of suicidal people do not wish to die. They seek escape from situations that they believe they cannot endure. There is no typical suicidal person although such a person is usually mentally unstable. This malady…
| 712 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Suicide

From World of Sociology, Gale
An insufficient degree of social integration may...
Suicide became a topic of sociological inquiry with Émile Durkheim’s classic study of it, published in the late nineteenth century. He defined it as “death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result.” While suicide…
| 577 words , 1 image
Key concepts:

Full text Article suicide

From The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology
A major sociological tradition derives from E. Durkheim's theory that suicide rates and different types of social context are related, in particular that suicide is related to the level of social integration so that increased disintegration leads to increased numbers of suicides. Three other…
| 380 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Suicide

From Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine
Suicide refers to a range of self-destructive behaviours ranging from non-fatal acts which have been called suicidal gestures, attempted suicide, parasuicide self-injury, or if poisoning is used, self-poisoning, and more recently deliberate self-harm, to fatal acts in which the person dies, commonly…
| 2,018 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article SUICIDE

From Dictionary of Forensic Psychology
Suicide has been defined as an act with a fatal outcome, brought about by the deceased in the knowledge of a potentially fatal outcome with the purpose of bringing about change. In the UK a coroner’s verdict of suicide normally requires clear evidence of intent to die (for example, a suicide note). …
| 1,536 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Suicide

From Encyclopedia of Women's Health
Suicide is when a person intentionally ends his or her life. Over the ages society has had differing views regarding this act—from acceptance, in that this is a choice, to considering it as a sin. Currently it is felt that suicide is rather complex resulting from social stressors, psychology, and…
| 1,207 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article SUICIDE

From The Edinburgh International Encyclopaedia of Psychoanalysis
The act of killing oneself. It remains a major cause of death among all age groups, being the third most common cause of death in those aged fifteen to thirty-four. Suicide has proved difficult to investigate reliably because of historical and theological taboos, but twentieth-century research…
| 448 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Suicide

From Encyclopedia of the Human Brain
GLOSSARY Theories addressing the phenomenon of suicide have been put forth from numerous academic disciplines. However, in the past few decades, empirical research efforts toward improved understanding, prediction, assessment, treatment, and prevention of suicide have come mainly from within the…
| 153 words
Key concepts:
Mind Map

Stack overflow
More Library Resources