Suicidality : Psychoanalytic Concepts for Understanding Treatment and Research

Suicidality poses a serious problem for health policy.

According to WHO statistics, more than one million people worldwide commit suicide annually, and in many countries suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the under-40s.

Although psychoanalysis has pursued the subject of suicidality from very early on in its history, and the psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches now offer advanced methods for the understanding and treatment of suicidality, suicide prevention strategies rarely reflect these methods.

This book intends to rectify this, by showing how psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic concepts can make a vital contribution to the understanding, treatment and prevention of suicidal behaviour.