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Affective States in Suicide

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Suicide by Self-Immolation

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Abstract

Suicide, a leading preventable cause of death worldwide, occurs in the context of mental anguish that overwhelms one’s co** resources. Self-immolation is a particularly dramatic and painful suicide method that may be motivated by unique drivers such as intimate partner violence, a sense of expendability, political protest against social oppression, and human rights violations. Identification of risk factors is a crucial step in suicide prevention. The presence of certain high risk affective and cognitive states reliably predicts suicide. Hopelessness, rage, guilt, desperation, feelings of abandonment and expendability, anxiety, feelings of loneliness, shame or humiliation, self-hatred, thwarted belongingness, and perceived burdensomeness are various affective and cognitive states linked with suicide. Understanding how intense negative affects relate to the current theories and models of suicide may help clinicians identify suicide crises and facilitate broader prevention efforts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological Medicine, Changi General Hospital, Singapore, Singapore

    David Choon Liang Teo & Andre Teck Sng Tay

  2. Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, Singapore

    David Choon Liang Teo & Andre Teck Sng Tay

  3. Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    David Choon Liang Teo & Andre Teck Sng Tay

  4. Section of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Medicine, College of Medicine & Philippine General Hospital, University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines

    Constantine D. Della

  5. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, New York, NY, USA

    Marco Christian Michael

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  1. David Choon Liang Teo
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  2. Constantine D. Della
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  3. Marco Christian Michael
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  4. Andre Teck Sng Tay
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Correspondence to David Choon Liang Teo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA

    César A. Alfonso

  2. Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health, Bengaluru, India

    Prabha S. Chandra

  3. IPPG, Klinikum der Universität München, Munich, Germany

    Thomas G. Schulze

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Teo, D.C.L., Della, C.D., Michael, M.C., Tay, A.T.S. (2021). Affective States in Suicide. In: Alfonso, C.A., Chandra, P.S., Schulze, T.G. (eds) Suicide by Self-Immolation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62613-6_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62613-6_11

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