ABSTRACT
The evidence presented in previous chapters suggests that the increased availability of a lethal agent increases its use for suicide and, depending on the particular method, may increase the overall suicide rate, creating new suicides rather than merely causing potential suicides to switch methods. Conversely, a decline in the availability of lethal agent leads not only to a fall in the use of that method, but possibly also to a decrease in the overall rate of suicide. Correlational studies of the kind we have reported have well-known limitations for causal analysis, but three aspects of the present set of studies provide powerful support for these propositions:
the studies involve a variety of lethal agents,
for some of the methods of suicide we have presented time-series and regional studies, and
the research has used data from a number of different countries.
