ABSTRACT
The major hypothesis about the choice of methods for suicide is that people choose a method readily available. Clarke and Lester and Lester have conducted studies and reviewed the research of others to show that, the more available and accessible a method for suicide is, the more often people choose that method for suicide. Some methods for suicide are more dramatic than others. For example, occasionally the pilot of a commercial aircraft chooses to die by suicide and kills the others on the airplane with him. Marks and Abernathy identify five variables that would help to explain an individual's preference for a particular method of self-destruction: its physical availability, the suicide's knowledge of the method, his familiarity with the method, his personal or social accessibility to the method, and his evaluation of the method. Lester studied undergraduates' perceptions of two relatively common methods of suicide: shooting and overdosing.
