Suicide, sleep, and death: Some possible interrelations among cessation, interruption, and continuous phenomena.

Growing out of work at the (Los Angeles) Suicide Prevention Center, a theoretical re-examination of the concepts of death and suicide is proposed. In lieu of "death" and "suicide," other concepts are developed: Cessation (final); interruption (periodical); and continuation (modal, partial, critical, and focal). Examples of behaviors and psychological states for each of these are given. A set of cross-behavioral congruencies focusing especially on the similarities between sleep phenomena (seen as interruption) and self-destructive phenomena (seen as cessation), is developed under the headings of beliefs, motives, affects, cognitive patterns, sociocultural influences, etc. In addition, relevant sources of data—primarily from a variety of types of personal documents and anamnestic data—for each type of behavior are suggested. The focus of the paper is the investigation of cessation (death and suicidal) phenomena through the study of paradigmatically useful interruption and continuation states. (35 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)