Product Description

In the wake of a suicide, the most troubling questions are invariably the most difficult to answer: how could we have known? What could we have done? And always, unremittingly: why? Written by a clinical psychologist whose own life has been touched by suicide, this book offers the clearest account ever given of why some people choose to die. Drawing on extensive clinical and epidemiological evidence, as well as personal experience. Thomas Joiner brings a comprehensive understanding to seemingly incomprehensible behaviour. Among the many people who have considered, attempted, or died by suicide, he finds three factors that mark those most at risk of death: the feeling of being a burden on loved ones; the sense of isolation; and, chillingly, the learned ability to hurt oneself. Joiner tests his theory against diverse facts taken from clinical anecdotes, history, literature, popular culture, anthropology, epidemiology, genetics and neurobiology - facts about suicide rates among men and women; white and African-American men; anorexics, athletes, prostitutes, and physicians; members of cults, sports fans and citizens of nations in crisis. The result is the most coherent and persuasive explanation ever given of why and how people overcome life's strongest instinct, self-preservation. Joiner's is a work that makes sense of the bewildering array of statistics and stories surrounding suicidal behaviour; at the same time, it offers insight, guidance, and essential information to clinicians, scientists, and health practitioners, and to anyone whose life has been affected by suicide.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #544540 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

The Times. 7 June 2007
The change in the way I now look at my dad's death comes because of a compelling book, Why People Die by Suicide, by Thomas Joiner. He has presented a theory that he contends frames all suicides.

About the Author
Thomas Joiner is Bright-Burton Professor of Psychology at Florida State University.

Customer Reviews

Compelling, compassionate and clinically useful
Professor Joiner has successfully used the experience of his father's suicide to provide a personal and compassionate framework onto which to hang an accessible and compelling academic model for why people die by suicide.

Well written and wide reaching in scope, learning and reference this book provides insight into the minds of those who die by suicide and proposes a model for mapping and assessing the factors that contribute to suicide.

It is academically vigorous and clinically useful. For the clinician it provides many original ideas and aids to the management of suicidal and peri-suicidal people and risk assessment is addressed. My own clinical practice has been challenged and changed by this book.

It would be, by increasing understanding, perhaps, comforting to the layperson seeking to grieve a loved one who died by suicide. As someone affected personally and professionally by suicide I certainly found it to be so.

Hopefully, by addressing the misconceptions that surround suicide and challenging stereotypical responses, (Such as suicide is cowardly act) this book will help to de-stigmatise the subject and the people affected by it.

I whole heartedly recommend this book and commend Professor Joiner for writing it, it must have been a hard book to write. I have no doubt that this book will help many.