Suicidal Feelings in the General Population: A Prevalence Study

Feelings that life is not worth living and thoughts of suicide are common in psychiatric patients, particularly in depressives (Beck, 1967). Very little information is available, however, regarding the occurrence of suicidal feelings in the general population. In contrast, the epidemiology of completed suicide has received extensive study (Dublin, 1963), and there have been some epidemiological studies of attempted suicide (Shneidman and Farberow, 1961; Mintz, 1964; Parkin and Stengel, 1965). However, this information cannot automatically be generalized to suicidal feelings. It has been emphasized in recent years that suicidal phenomena are diverse, and that completed suicide, suicidal attempts, and suicidal feelings should not be equated (Stengel and Cook, 1958; Neuringer, 1962).