Types of suicidal behavior: description, causes and prevention

2024 Author: Miguel Ramacey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 06:11

Why do people commit suicide? What drives them to take this terrible step? Agree, a terrible figure of 400-500 thousand people in the world die voluntarily every year (according to the World He alth Organization). It is especially difficult to talk about infant mortality for this reason. Consider the types of suicidal behavior, the causes, let's talk about prevention and much more.

What is suicide?

This is a voluntary, conscious departure from life. So, consider the types of suicide, causes and prevention. The structure of suicidal behavior is as follows:

• thoughts of death;
• preparing for it;
• attempts;
• intentions;
• an act of suicide.

Men in proportion to women leave life voluntarily 4:1. About 700 thousand people attempt to commit suicide. There are 25 suicide attempts per tragedy. Approximately 20-30% of people during the year try to commit suicide again. Every sixtha suicide leaves a suicide note, in which experts often identify the cause of death.

Suicide is a form of deviant behavior

Let's consider suicidal behavior as a kind of deviant behavior. The last phrase translated from Latin is "deviation from the road." Thus, deviant behavior is the specific actions of an individual, for example, Ivanov distributes drugs, and in a global sense, a relatively stable phenomenon: banditry, drug addiction, prostitution, and so on. In a narrow sense, the term means a deviation from the norm of an individual or group of people.

Suicidal behavior is destructive, it can include such forms of deviant behavior as alcoholism, drug addiction, categorical unwillingness to be treated, conscious exposure to danger. This includes driving while intoxicated, intentionally provoking fights and participating in them, as well as in wars, and so on.

Let's look at species

Suicidal is a form of avoidant behavior and indicates that a person has an unhe althy way of thinking, which includes thoughts of suicide, thinking, preparing to commit an act. So, the following types of suicidal behavior are distinguished:

1. Demonstrative. Does not imply real intent. A suicide attempt is depicted, as a rule, with the expectation that they will have time to save, in order to attract lost attention, to pity, to arouse sympathy, love and care, to avoidpunishment for the wrongdoing. This behavior is more common in children and adolescents. We will discuss the reasons below. The worst thing is that there are cases when the demonstrative method ended in a real tragedy. They mostly depict cuts in the veins, taking harmless drugs, less often hanging.
2. Affective. Suicide attempts are made at the moment of affect, which lasts about a minute or stretches for hours and days. Can act in tandem with the first method. This suicidal behavior is characterized by hanging and poisoning.
3. Hidden suicide. A person understands that this is not the most worthy solution to the problem, but, seeing no other way out, he is consciously ready to die. Will engage in extreme sports, drive a car, travel to hot spots and so on. Covert suicides are not afraid of death, they long for it to come.
4. True. This is a deliberate, well-thought-out, well-planned decision to voluntarily die. The person will do everything to make the attempt effective and not interfere.

We have considered the classification of types of suicidal behavior, let's move on to possible causes.

What pushes people to take this step?

Here is another definition of suicidal behavior. This is a way that is characterized by the desire to consciously end one's life. The goal is death, and the motive is the solution of the problem. So, to the reasons. There are indeed a lot of them. We give their classification, they distinguish:

1. External factors. They are divided into macrosocial (conditions of interaction of the individual with the outside world) and microsocial (relations with close people). The former include the situation of unemployment in the country, a decrease in the living standards of the population, moving to a metropolis, etc. The latter include the interpersonal relationship of a suicide with a close environment for him. On their basis, the causes of suicidal behavior can be classified as follows: family conflicts, unrequited love, fatal illness, death of a loved one, and others.
2. Biological reasons. A decrease in serotonin activity determines a predisposition to suicide.
3. Genetic. Heredity.
4. Psychological. Suicide is at the root of chronic incurable depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and anxiety disorders. This is also facilitated by low stress resistance, maximalism, egocentrism, dependence on the opinions of other people, emotional lability and others.

Now we know about the types of suicidal behavior. Reasons are a deep and complex concept, the roots of which go back to the socio-psychiatric analysis of the problem. These include everything that causes suicide, and the reason is an event that serves as a driving force for the action of the cause. Now let's talk about the specifics of suicidal behavior in adolescents.

Child suicide

The psychology of children and adolescents is still unstable. It manifests itself as a changeable mood, whims, fits of anger. The age of 13-17 years is the most difficult. Let's talk about suicidebehavior, causes and prevention.

Children and teenagers have no real desire to die. Their idea of death is extremely fuzzy, infantile. A suicide attempt is a cry for help. Types of suicidal behavior in adolescents, as well as adults, are conditionally divided:

• to true;
• demonstrative;
• and affective.

The most dangerous period is the age interval of 14-16 years. But even younger children resort to suicide attempts. As a rule, they are pushed to this by an unhe althy psychological atmosphere in the family, misunderstanding and dislike on the part of their parents. Think about what a terrible figure - 80%, this is the number of child suicides committed due to conflicts with relatives, mom and dad, in particular.

How to keep your child safe

It is important to unravel the thoughts of the child in time. Although, it is extremely difficult to recognize suicidal tendencies. But still there are features that will help to calculate them. So, we looked at the types of suicidal behavior. The signs are as follows:

1. Closedness. Sometimes parents are calm and happy that the child is sitting at home under supervision, sitting for hours at the computer. But this is exactly what should be alarming.
2. Unreasonable irritability, nervousness, anger and even bitterness.
3. Excessive talkativeness. Sometimes the child talks a lot to cover up the problem.
4. Depressive state, which manifests itself in tearfulness, self-doubt. From the side it looks like the child is offended by all whitelight.

Should alert and blackmail words, for example, don't buy a bike, I'll hang myself. Parents do not attach importance to the phrase, being sure that this is a joke. You can’t let this situation take its course, the child needs to be explained that they don’t joke with such things.

Let's move on to the reasons

Most young boys and girls see suicide as a solution to a problem, not the end of their own lives. A child, due to his age, is vulnerable to stressful situations due to an unstable psyche, weak will, lack of life experience and knowledge. Let's try to classify the reasons:

1. Internal conflict. With this term, we generalize many reasons, such as misunderstanding of peers, bad relationships with teachers, unrequited love, low self-esteem. These are problems that the child, unfortunately, cannot cope with on his own.
2. Ignored by parents. As mentioned above, is the main cause of suicides.

Thus, the family is the main factor influencing the formation of suicidal behavior in adolescents.

But what are the real reasons?

Specialists believe that suicidal behavior in adolescents is formed in close relationship with the problem of social adaptation. Sometimes, the difficulties that arise in the educational team with peers acquire universal proportions, which push children to suicide. Consider several conditional personality types that have suicidal tendencies.inclinations. So:

1. Egoist. Pursues only his own benefit.
2. Fatalist. Believes that everything is destined by fate.
3. Imitator. Uses suicide as a blackmail to intimidate him into getting what he wants.
4. Altruist. Supports others in everything, which can lead to death "for the company."
5. And an anomic type of behavior. Refusal to accept generally accepted norms and rules.

To avoid tragedy, you need to be a friend to the child. Only in this case, he will trust his problems, will not be afraid to talk about them, afraid of the consequences.

Do you know what a child does on social media?

This is perhaps a very serious problem today. The world is immersed in the Internet. And it is no longer possible to exist without it. Unfortunately, we draw from there not only useful information, the media can also have a negative impact. Browse your kids' online social media pages. There are many communities that extol the cult of death. Detailed instructions are given there on how to die, terrible photographs simulating death are posted. Just think what effect all this horror can have on the fragile, unstable children's psyche.

How to keep a child from scary thoughts?

We looked at the types of suicidal behavior, figured out the causes, let's talk about prevention. It should be carried out in all areas of a child's life, starting, of course, with the family. Here are a fewrecommendations:

• be a friend to the baby;
• don't yell or belittle him;
• don't insult, don't use foul language;
• don't scare;
• do not use physical violence;
• don't blackmail;
• don't abuse his feelings.

Teach your child to overcome difficulties, explain that any problems can be solved, especially when there are relatives and friends nearby. Develop the talents of the child, only then he will be interested in achieving the goal, learning new things, such thoughts will never arise.

About the tasks of prevention

We already know what suicidal behavior in adolescents is, but prevention is needed to eliminate risk factors. Therefore, an integrated approach is important. If you can not cope with the child, seek the help of a psychologist, a teacher who is engaged in his education.

The main task of preventing suicidal behavior in adolescents is to identify a risk group. Consider the classification of the contingent of children prone to suicide. These are children and teenagers:

• childhood trauma of the skull;
• with various forms of disharmonious development;
• asocial individuals with signs of deviant behavior;
• idealizing feelings of love and sexual relationships.

It is important to closely monitor the development of your child, to take not fake, but real participation in his life. Somewhere you will have to sacrifice personal time and even a career in order to give more care, love and affection to the child. Help inself-realization, hug and kiss more often, speak kind, sincere words.