Extrapolation from attempted suicides to completed suicides.

This study applied a previously proposed methodology for analyzing data from suicide attempters in order to make extrapolations to completed suicides. A sample of suicide attempters was divided into three groups on the basis of their intent to die. When the 56 possible correlates of suicidal intent were examined, a number of significant monotonic differences between the groups were found, from which predictions concerning completed suicides were made. Many of the particular findings supported previous observations on suicide, but some deviations from expectations were noted. The study demonstrated that it is possible to make inferences about completed suicides from studies of attempted suicides.