Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T07:38:39.565Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Influence of Parental Death Anniversaries upon Suicide Dates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

J. Bunch  and
B. Barraclough
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Psychoanalytic literature has a number of references to suicidal acts taking place on the anniversary of the death of a loved person. Anniversaries of significant bereavements have been seen as likely to reactivate a depressive syndrome and as possible precipitants of suicide. Zilboorg (7) suggested that suicides might take their lives on the anniversary of a parent's death as though to expiate the death which they unconsciously perceived as the result of their own wishes. Others have seen the meaning of the suicide's act as a fantasied rebirth or new beginning with a lost love object, and the supposed occurrence of suicides on the anniversary of a death has again been instanced as support (Jackson (3)).

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 118 , Issue 547 , June 1971 , pp. 621 - 626
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1971 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Hilgard, J. R., Newman, M. F., and Fisk, F. (1960). ‘Strength of adult ego following childhood bereavement.’ American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 30, 788–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
2 Hilgard, J. R., Newman, M. F., and Fisk, F. (1961). ‘Evidence for functional genesis in mental illness: schizophrenia, depressive psychoses and psychoneuroses.’ Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 132, 3–16.Google Scholar
3 Jackson, D. (1957). ‘Theories of suicide.’ In: Clues to Suicide, (ed. E. Schneidman, and N. Farberow). New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
4 McMahon, B., and Pugh, T. F. (1965) ‘Suicide in the widowed.’ American Journal of Epidemiology, 81, 23–31.Google Scholar
5 Registrar General's Statistical Review of England and Wales, 1967, Part I, p. 9, Table 5; p. 299, Table 22. London: H.M.S.O. Google Scholar
6 Sainsbury, P., and Barraclough, B. (1968). ‘Differences between suicide rates.’ Nature, 220, 1252.Google Scholar
7 Zilboorg, G. (1937). ‘Considerations on suicide.’ American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 7, 15–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.