Suicide Attempts

I. Introduction STUDIES OF persons attempting suicide are numerous and provide many insights into descriptive and dynamic characteristics of this population. Only in recent years, however, have suicide attempts been scrutinized with a view to examining characteristics of the suicidal person after rather than before or during the self-destructive act.1-7These recent studies have focused primarily on modifications the suicide attempt produced in the persons' environment and on the number of those persons attempting suicide who ultimately do complete the suicidal act. The present investigation attempts to identify patterns of adjustment from the point of view of community psychiatric resources during a five- to eight-year period following a suicide attempt, and to identify characteristics in such patterns that discriminate between those persons likely subsequently to commit suicide and those who will not. A framework for preventive measures in this serious problem area may thus