Myths about suicide

Thomas E. Joiner

We need to get it in our heads that suicide is not easy, painless, cowardly, selfish, vengeful, selfmasterful, or rash; that it is not caused by breast augmentation, medicines, "slow" methods like smoking or anorexia, or, as some psychoanalysts thought, things like masturbation; that it is partly genetic and influenced by mental disorders, themselves often agonizing; and that it is preventable and treatable.