Suicidal feelings in the general population: a prevalence study.

INTRODUCTION Feelings that life is not worth living and thoughts of suicide are common in psychiatric patients, particularly in depressives (Beck, 1967).Very littleinformationis available, however, regarding the occurrence of suicidal feelings in the general population. In contrast, the epidemiology of completed suicide has received extensive study (Dublin, 1963), and therehave beensome epidemiological studies of attempted suicide (Shneidman and Farberow, 1961;Mintz,1964;Parkinand Stengel,1965). However, this information cannot automatically be generalized to suicidal feelings. It has been emphasized in recent years that suicidal pheno mena are diverse, and that completed suicide, suicidal attempts, and suicidal feelings should not be equated (Stengel and Cook, 1958; Neuringer, 1962). In this paper we shall present data obtained from a survey of a general population sample. As part of a detailedinterview,inquiry was made as to the experience in the last year of five suicidal phenomena, four of them suicidal feelings of differing intensity, the fifth a suicidal attempt. We shall report on the prevalence of these suicidal phenomena and their relationships to other data, including demographic charac teristics, psychiatricsymptoms, somatic illness, social adjustment, and life stress.