Suicide among gifted women: A prospective study.

Abstract

The longitudinal data from the Terman Genetic Studies of Genius were used to predict suicide in 40 women: 8 suicides, 15 women who were matched with the suicides on age of death, and 17 subjects who were still living in 1964. Seven variables from the subjects 1 files were assessed as possible predictors of suicide: subject's physical health, early loss of the father, stress in the family of origin, problems with alcohol, and three indices of mental health. A discriminant function analysis was able to differentiate the women who committed suicide from the two control groups. A seven-variable function predicted 100% of the suicides. A four-variable function predicted 75% of the suicides. The results indicate that suicide risk factors can be identified in women and certain "signatures" of suicide are as useful in predicting female suicide as male suicide.The psychological turmoil surrounding people who commit suicide has often been chronicled in psychological autopsies that describe the forces pushing a person toward suicide (Shneidman, 1981;Weisman, 1974). These psychological autopsies are retrospective, beginning with the fact of suicide and looking for harbingers of death in the days, weeks, and months preceding suicide (Niswander, Casey, & Humphrey, 1973). Although such retrospective studies have yielded numerous factors associated with increased suicide (Lester, 1983;Neuringer, 1974), these factors have rarely been validated as predictors of suicide in prospective studies.The Lundby study, conducted in Sweden, is the only prospective study of suicide currently available that used a representative sample. This study, which followed over 3,000 adults for 25 years, included periodic mental health evaluations for a representative sample of the Swedish population (Hagnell, Lanke, & Rorsman, 1981;Hagnell & Rorsman, 1980). So few women from this group committed suicide, however, that the investigators limited their analysis to the 23 male suicides.An alternative strategy that has been used to validate predictors of suicide is to follow psychiatric populations (Borg & Stahl, 1982;Juel-Nielsen, 1979;Robin, Brooke, & Freeman-Brown, 1968) or alcoholics (Berglund, 1984). The subjects in these studies are individuals who have been admitted to a hospital. Once they come to the attention of the mental health profession, these in-

Suicide and the Gifted Adolescent

“…The Terman data have been discussed by Shneidman (1981), who found that certain indicators of perturbation present in the files of the Terman men Ioumal for the Education of the Gifted who committed suicide made it possible to discriminate them from others who had died of natural causes and from those still living. Tomlinson-Keasey, Warren, and Elliott (1986) made similar findings in a study of Terman women. The indicators, or signatures, were drug or alcohol abuse, prior suicide threats or attempts, noticeable instability, depression, anxiety, ongoing stress either in the childhood or adult family, problems in parent-child relationships from early on, and homosexuality.…”

An examination of the literature base on the suicidal behaviors of gifted students

“…Lester found that participants whose mothers experienced longer pregnancies and who themselves experienced an early loss of another by death were more likely to have committed suicide at a younger age. Other studies (Tomlinson-Keasey & Warren, 1987;Tomlinson-Keasey, Warren, & Elliott, 1986) utilized longitudinal data from Terman's sample, but focused entirely on female participants. In these two articles, discriminant function analyses were performed utilizing seven risk factors as predictors of membership in three groups, those who committed suicide, living controls, and deceased controls.…”

Suicide: A Multidimensional Malaise

“…A converging view that there may be more similarities than differences in core psychological aspects across the sexes was presented by Tomlinson-Keasey, Warren, and Elliot (1986) in their prospective investigation of suicide among gifted women. In 1970Shneidman (1971 investigated the lives of five male suicides.…”