![]() Four years before her death, she attempted suicide by overdose and frequently discussed the incident subsequently.For years, she openly told her family that she felt depressed and suicidal.The usual reaction to this tragic tale beyond shock and horror was to dwell on the seemingly impulsive nature of the act and ask, “How could the reporter have known that the tape would jam?” However, the reporter’s behavior leading up to her suicide dispels the idea that she acted impulsively: She was rushed to a local hospital, but died 14 hours later. She shrugged and stated, “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts, and in living color, you are going to see another first-an attempted suicide.” She extracted a gun from beneath her desk and shot herself behind the right ear. When the reporter called for the news station’s video footage of the scene, the tape jammed. In July of that year, the reporter was covering the story of a shooting that had happened the day before. The tragic death of a Florida television news reporter in 1974 illustrates the fallacy that suicide is an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment whim, much like casting off peanut shells at the ballpark. ![]() In Myths About Suicide, 2 I used the framework developed in the previous book to contend that death by suicide is neither impulsive, cowardly, vengeful, controlling, nor selfish. In Why People Die by Suicide, 1 I argued that a kind of fearlessness is required to face voluntarily the daunting prospect of one’s death, and that doing so necessarily involves a fight against ancient, ingrained, and powerful self-preservation instincts. This special report discusses some of those myths. They often inhibit the ability of clinicians (and families) to assess the severity and magnitude of a patient’s suicide risk. ![]() Myths about suicide abound in the therapeutic setting.
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