Failed suicide attempt

Not to be confused with suicide survivor.

Suicide
Social aspects Legislation Philosophy Religious views Euthanasia Right to die Benevolent suicide
Suicide crisis Assessment of risk Crisis hotline Intervention Prevention Suicide watch
Suicide types Assisted Copycat Cult Familicide Forced Honor Internet Mass Murder–suicide Parasuicide Suicide attack Pact
Epidemiology Gender Suicide rate
History Suicide in antiquity List of suicides
In warfare Suicide attack Suicide mission Kamikaze Banzai charge
Related phenomena Ideation Self-harm Suicide note Locations Failed suicide attempt
By country Bangladesh Canada China France Greenland India Japan Lithuania Pakistan Russia South Korea Ukraine United Kingdom United States
Rates List of countries by suicide rate List of OECD countries by suicide rate

A failed suicide attempt (Latin: tentamen suicidii) is a suicidal action from which the actor survived. Some are regarded as not true attempts at all, but rather parasuicide. In parasuicide, the attempt may be a wish to affect another person by the behaviour. Consequently, it occurs in a social context and may represent a request for help. The behaviour is an act of desperation, and may result in severe injury or death anyway. Some suicide methods have higher rates of lethality than others; e.g. wrist-slashing has a much lower lethality rate than use of firearms, which results in death 90% of the time. 75% of all suicide attempts are by the use of drugs, a method that is often thwarted because the drug is nonlethal or is used at a nonlethal dosage. These people survive 97% of the time. About one-third of people who attempt suicide will repeat the attempt within 1 year, and about 10% of those who threaten or attempt suicide eventually do kill themselves.

Attempted suicide can cause injury. For example, A.J. Reed attempted to kill himself with a shotgun and survived, but the blast destroyed most of his face and completely blinded him. 300,000 (or more) Americans survive a suicide attempt each year. A majority have injuries that are treated in the emergency room treatment, and then released. However, about 116,000 are hospitalized, of whom 110,000 are eventually discharged alive. Their average hospital stay is 10 days; the average cost is $15,000. Seventeen percent, some 19,000, of these people are permanently disabled, restricted in their ability to work, each year, at a cost of $127,000 per person.

Suicide has long been held to have partially economic motivations. Marcotte (2003), in exploring economic motivations surrounding suicide attempts, looked at attempts made between 1991 and 1992 among a cohort of 5877 Americans. Using a model he developed, he showed a correlation between failed suicide attempts and subsequently higher average incomes, particularly in cases of "hard suicide" attempts that had a high probability of success but failed nonetheless. Marcotte claims that this increase comes as a result of suicide attempts being cries for help, as they "suddenly have access to lots of resources—medical care, psychiatric attention, familial love and concern—that were previously expensive or unavailable." However, the model does not actually show this as the reason, nor does Marcotte convincingly demonstrate that the correlation is causative.

See also

• Acute liver failure after drug poisoning
• National Survivors of Suicide Day