LOS ANGELES SUICIDE PREVENTION CENTER
ROBERT E. LITMAN M.D.1,
EDWIN S. SHNEIDMAN PH.D., , and
NORMAN L. FARBEROW PH.D.
1 Psychiatrist-Director of the Suicide Prevention Center, 9400 Brighton Way, Beverly Hills, Calif.
Suicidal reactions represent a complicated synthesis of mental illness and interpersonal or social-living problems. Many potentially suicidal persons can be greatly helped by appropriate psychiatric treatment. Often pre-suicidal behavior is associated with strong defensive efforts (in patient and relatives) to deny the problems and avoid facing the illness. Opportunities to circumvent the resistance should be seized whenever possible.
Some benefits of a Suicide Prevention Center are:
1. Some pre-suicidal persons get appropriate treatment who might not otherwise get treatment.
2. Much needed data, especially longitudinal studies of the lives of pre-suicidal persons, are collected and analyzed.
3. The S.P.C. facilitates the functioning of a number of different agencies and community resources where they are concerned with suicide, leading to smoother handling of pre-suicidal persons.
4. The S.P.C. helps provide educational information for police, physicians, judges and others in a position to recognize pre-suicidal persons.
5. Proper publicity might help overcome the popular prejudice against psychiatric hospitalization.
6. The S.P.C. offers an opportunity for experimental activities such as psychiatric emergency call service and the use of supervised volunteers in emergency situations.
Finally, it should be said that there is more to suicide than mental illness. In a sense, self-destruction reflects the relationship of the individual to his community and his civilization. It may be that a certain minimal level or rate of suicide is "built in" to our competitive culture, part of the price we pay for our prized individual freedom to dispose of our lives as we wish. As the Suicide Prevention Center develops we hope to increase our knowledge of suicide, sharpen our diagnostic accuracy and contribute answers to some of the questions we have raised, but as far as we can see into the future, suicide and suicide prevention will continue to present new problems.
