Journal – Suicidology Online

Edwin S. Shneidman on Suicide

Click HERE for the original paper.

By Anton A. Leenaars

EXCERPTS FROM THE PAPER:

It is true that happenstance marked Shneidman’s career. While working at the LA Veterans Administration in 1949, he was asked to write condolence letters to widows of two victims by suicide. He researched the two cases at the LA County Coroner’s Office and there was led to a vault of suicide notes. He never looked back. Shneidman spent his life studying why people kill themselves, indeed, the intensive and creative study of people who died by suicide.