ABSTRACT
Suicide is violence. Homicide is violence. They are lethal violence. Suicide, homicide, and other violence have always been part of the human experience. Suicide is not a crime. Within the larger frame of the ecological model, at the individual level, suicide is seen as a state of being, a human malaise. Suicide is an intentional, self-directed act, and many insane people—not all—cannot commit suicide since that person lacks "the requisite mental capacity to form intent to commit suicide". A current popular formulation regarding suicide is that suicide is simply due to an external event; for example, a rejection by a lover, the removal of a gun from a police officer, an investigation into sexual harassment, whatever. In the 1960s and 1970s there was a focus on the prediction of suicide, and suicidologists believed that it would eventually be possible to predict which individuals out of a population would ultimately complete suicide.
