Title: Depression and Suicide | Psychology Today
Headings: Depression and Suicide
Depression and Suicide
On This Page
How does depression lead to suicidal thinking?
How common is suicide in depression?
When does emotional pain become unbearable?
What factors raise the risk of suicide among the depressed?
How can I tell if suicide is a risk?
Do anti-suicide pacts work?
Next: Children and Depression
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Content: Life events involving loss —a job, a relationship, one’s health—play a role, too. When does emotional pain become unbearable? Suicide, some observers believe, is less an attempt to end one’s own life than to escape the mental pain of endless negative thoughts, reliving life’s failures and defeats, enduring constant self-recrimination, and envisioning only bleakness ahead, which are the hallmarks of depression. Rejection of any kind—relationship breakup, the silence of a friend, social shunning— is one of the harshest experiences a human can endure and can create so much emotional agony that it is increasingly linked to suicide attempts among young adults. Studies show that the same areas of the brain that are activated by physical pain are activated when we experience rejection. But unlike with physical pain, psychological pain can endlessly loop through the brain; every time such experiences are recalled, the pain is re-experienced in all its acute emotional intensity. What factors raise the risk of suicide among the depressed? Just as depression can run in families, so can suicide. Depressed people with a family member who died by suicide are themselves at elevated risk for taking their own life.