Suicide haunts our literature and our culture. It’s the taboo subtext to our successes and our happiness. The reporting of a suicide of any public figure disturbs each of us. Amid our dreams of happiness and achievement lurk our nightmares of self- destruction. Who is not mindful of the potential self-defeating elements within our own personality ?. Each new day contains the threat of failure and assaults by others, but it’s the threat of …showed first 75 words of 1748 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1748 total…should be such effective substitutes for conditions of war.” To understand suicide we must understand suffering an psychological pain and various thresholds for enduring it; to treat suicidal people ( and prevent suicide) we must address and then soften and reduce the psychache that drives it. What my research had taught me is that only a small minority of cases of excessive psychological pain result in suicide, but every case of suicide stems from excessive psychache.