Psychological theories and models of suicide and suicidal behavior

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization every 40 seconds, someone somewhere in the world dies from suicide. The number of suicide attempts that do not end with death is twenty times larger than the number of suicide deaths. For decades researchers have been developing theories and models aiming to explain why people kill themselves. At the same time, they are trying to provide tools for successful suicide prediction and to emphasize different psychological, social, and economic factors that we should target when planning prevention. However, even though there is a significant number of theories of suicide, suicide prevalence is telling us that our theories are failing, suggesting that we should probably change the approach to this phenomenon. This study represents a review of selected psychological theories and models of suicide that are addressing psychological processes that underpin suicidal ideation and suicidal behavior. This paper covers psychoanalytic theories of suicide, diathesis-stress models of suicidal behavior, cognitive-behavioral models of suicide and suicidal behavior, complex (integrative) models and evolutionary theories of suicide and as such this paper represents a conceptual framework for understanding suicide from a psychological perspective.