Suicide as escape from self.

“Anxiety may often be caused by the threat of exclusion from social groups or loss of social bonds (e.g., Baumeister, in press; Baumeister & Tice, in press; Bowlby, 1969, 1973).”

“Indeed, the main criticism that can be leveled against Durkheim's hypothesis is that it is incomplete in the sense that it does not explain everything about suicide (e.g., Baumeister, 1990; Douglas, 1967), but it is correct as far as it goes.”

“However, the interpersonal theory diverges from previous theories in its proposal that an unmet “need to belong” (Baumeister & Leary, 1995, p. 1) is the specific interpersonal need involved in desire for suicide. The theory also differs in that we propose that thwarted belongingness is a multidimensional construct. Fi…”

“1136/jech-2011200464 Baumeister, R. F. (1990). Suicide as escape from self. Psychological Review, 97, 90–113. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.97.1.90 Baumert, J., Schneider, B., Lukaschek, K., Emeny, R. T., Meisinger, C., Erazo, N., . . . Ladwig, K. H. (2014). Adverse conditions at the workplace are associated wit…”

“Several such risk factors include the presence of hopelessness (83–85), anhedonia (49,86), impulsiveness (70,87–89), and high emotional reactivity (86,87,90), each of which may increase psychological distress to a point that is unbearable and lead a person to seek escape via suicide (88,91–93).”

“When the motivational conditions involved in suicide are analyzed, more than half of actual or attempted suicides involve an attempt to flee from aversive events (Loo, 1986; Smith & Bloom, 1985), especially states of mind such as guilt and anxiety (Bancroft, Skrimshire & Simkins, 1976; Baumeister, 1990).”

“Suicidal behavior is often preceded by just such a period of narrow and rigid cognitive functioning that may well be sought as an escape from a highly aversive view of self brought on by recent setbacks or traumas (Baumeister, 1990b).”

“Human beings experience anxiety at the threat of separation or exclusion from their mothers (Bowlby, 1969, 1973) or, indeed, from significant others in general (Baumeister & Tice, 1990).”

“When events reflect badly on the self, people may seek to avoid or escape self-awareness (for example, Baumeister, 1990, 1991; Greenberg & Musham, 1981; Heatherton & Baumeister, 1991).”

“People may escape the self by consuming alcohol (Hull, 1981), binge eating (Heatherton & Baumeister, 1991), masochism (Baumeister, 1991), and even suicide (Baumeister, 1990).”

“F or p er so na l u se o nl y. influential account that has direct bearings on underrepresentation of general regulatory mechanisms is escape theory, which has been utilized to explain suicidal behavior (Baumeister 1990) and binge eating (Heatherton & Baumeister 1991).”

“Similar to Baumeister’s (1990) escape theory of suicide, individuals who engage in DSH may experience a breakdown in their cognitive or information processing systems under conditions of intense emotional arousal.”

“Such an interpretation is consistent with an escape model of suicide, which suggests that people attempt suicide in an effort to escape intolerable distress regardless of the specific source of that distress.(39,40) Such a model also may help explain the strong dose-response relationship observed between number of dis…”

“This finding was explained in terms of social exclusion producing a state of cognitive deconstruction, marked by flat affect, and similar to that found in the presuicidal state (Baumeister, 1990).”

“Future research could also address the hypotheses that other predictors of suicide, including mental pain (Shneidman, 1985), aversive self-awareness (Baumeister, 1990), and hopelessness (Cornette, Abramson, & Bardone, 2000), are related to suicidal desire through their relationships with thwarted belongingness and per…”

“There appears to be a pathway from not living up to personal standards, to low selfesteem and to being depressed (Harter, 1986, 1990; Higgins, 1987, 1989; Baumeister, 1990).”

“Although the concepts of entrapment and defeat are not new (Baumeister, 1990) and have been linked to both animal and human models of psychopathology for some time (Price, 1972; Henry, 1982; Gilbert, 1989, 1992; Dixon et al.”

“One possibility that has been suggested in the literature is that high comorbidity creates an especially intolerable situation from which people attempt to escape via suicide [48,49].”

“When current life plans are not working, the distress and lack of motivation that characterize depression may motivate planning and reassessment(49) or escape, even by suicide.(50) Hamburg summarized possible functions of depression, saying,”

“For example, major theories have emphasized the roles of psychache (Shneidman, 1993), escape (Baumeister, 1990), and social isolation (Durkheim, 1951) without specifying whether these factors explain suicide ideation, attempts, or both.”

“A central challenge in public health revolves around how to identify individuals who are at risk for taking their own lives [3, 8, 66].”

“…repeatedly been suggested that both suicide and suicidal behaviour can be viewed in terms of an attempt to escape from aversive self-consciousness (Baumeister, 1990), unbearable ‘psychache’ (Shneidman, 1997) or intolerable situations in which the opportunity to escape or to receive relief are…”

“First, they affect variables that may contribute to diathesis for suicide, namely our perception of and adaptations to the environment and self (51, 82, 44).”

“Twenge, Baumeister, Tice, and Stucke (2001), for example, found that participants who experienced social exclusion (receiving”

“Suicidal and nonsuicidal self-injury have long been proposed to function as a means of escape from intolerable emotional states (e.g., Baumeister, 1990; Favazza, 1996), and treatments for selfinjurers have included components that teach patients how to better tolerate distress (Linehan et al.,…”

“In addition, because humans have a strong need to establish and maintain social relationships (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), self-discrepancies can occur when individuals feel socially excluded with regard to an important referent group. Several studies show that when self-discrepancies arise in terms of one's affiliatio…”

“The deconstructed state has been used previously to describe presuicidal tendencies (Baumeister, 1990), and it is marked by emotional numbness, an altered perception of time, thoughts of meaninglessness, lethargy, and avoidance of self-focused attention.”

“In addition, the suggestion that people attempt suicide to escape intolerable distress (Baumeister, 1990; Nock, Hwang, Sampson, & Kessler, 2010) led us to hypothesize that levels of distress would be more closely linked to behavior than the frequency and controllability attributes.”

“The deconstructed state includes escape from emotional distress, but the emotional distress itself stems from self-awareness in connection with recent failures or setbacks (Baumeister, 1990, 1991).”

“Baumeister (1990) proposed that the numbness reflects a cognitive strategy to”

“Baumeister, R. F. (1990). Suicide as escape from self. Psychological Review, 97, 90–113. Briere, J., & Gil, E. (1998). Self-mutilation in clinical and general population samples: Prevalence, correlates, and functions. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 68, 609–620. Broderick, P. C. (2005). Mindfulness and coping wit…”

“The same form of dehumanization is implied by research on the experiential impact of social ostracism, which refers to ‘‘cognitive deconstructive” states (Twenge, Catanese, & Baumeister, 2003) that involve emotional numbing, reduced empathy, cognitive inflexibility, lethargy, and an absence of meaningful thought. Baum…”

“These findings are consistent with models for suicidal behavior that require some disinhibitory factor even in predominantly premeditated attempts, suggesting that impulsivity increases risk when combined with depression (7, 49, 50).”

“Suicidal thoughts and behaviors have similarly been conceptualized as avoidant or escape-based responses to the experience of strong emotions (Baumeister, 1990; Boergers, Spirito, & Donaldson, 1998; Briere, Hodges, & Godbout, 2010; Bryan, Rudd, & Wertenberger, 2013; Shneidman, 1993), highlighting the potential functio…”

“Likewise, several theoretical accounts of suicidal behavior have emphasized the desire to escape as a central impetus (e.g., Baumeister, 1990; Johnson et al., 2008; Shneidman, 1996).”

“…stable and global has been linked to depressive symptomatology (Luten, Ralph, & Mineka, 1997; Metalsky, Abramson, Seligman, Semmel, & Peterson, 1982), and theorists have suggested it may have a key role in the aetiology of suicidal behaviors (Abramson, Metalsky, & Alloy, 1989; Baumeister, 1990).”

“Second, compatible with theories of suicide risk (Baumeister, 1990,1991), grit allows individuals to create and sustain life goals that are a primary source of meaning and purpose in life. Baumeister’s (1990) escape theory of suicide states that suicide arises from a desire to escape the negative emotions created by s…”

“, Beautrais, A., . . . Williams, D. R. (2009). Cross-national analysis of the associations among mental disorders and suicidal behavior: Findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys.”

“Experiential avoidance is conceptually related to Baumeister’s (1990) model of self avoidance (i.”

“This theory is compatible with and adds to other prominent models of suicidality (e.g., Baumeister, 1990; Beck, 1996; Linehan, 1993).”

“The relationship between poor single word reading ability, school dropout, and suicidality is consistent with the implications of escape theory (Baumeister, 1990).”

“The link with the ‘escape from self’ theory of suicide is less obvious (Baumeister, 1990).”

“These states represent a defense against the emotional distress and aversive self-awareness that follows social exclusion (Baumeister, 1990) and have also been noted by Williams (2001), who found that people respond to ostracism with numbness and a narrowly concrete focus on the immediate present.”

“Relatedly, Baumeister (1990) proposed that suicide attempts represent an escape from aversive self-awareness and that individuals develop a diminished ability to resist impulses to engage in suicidal behavior while experiencing such a state and, as a result, become increasingly at risk for engaging…”

“People also escape the self by drinking alcohol, taking drugs, overeating, engaging in extreme sexual behavior, and ultimately committing suicide (Baumeister, 1990, 1991; Hull, 1981).”

“Impulsivity and aggression are closely linked behaviors (Barratt, Stanford, Kent, & Felthous, 1997), and impulsivity is an important component of theories explaining suicidal behavior (e.g., Baechler, 1980; Baumeister, 1990).”

“…may turn to risk behaviours such as substance abuse as a way to cope with or escape from the negative feelings associated with low self-worth (Baumeister, 1990; Jessor, Van den Bos, Vanderryn, Costa, & Turbin, 1995), because these are the only means available to them to deal with stress…”

“…the lifespan from suicides among children who feel unable to meet their parents' expectations, to aging men ESTEEM THREAT, SELF-REGULATION, AND SELF-DEFEAT 151 and women who believe that they can no longer live up to the inflated images that others have of them (see Baumeister, 1990, for a review).”

“In fact, suicidal behavior has been thought of as an escape from aversive self-awareness and negative emotion,[66] or as relief from negative affect.”

“Suicide, like other self-destructive behaviors, can be seen as a way to escape from painful reality ( Baumeister 1990 ).”

“Five years earlier, Baumeister (1990) also sounded the same alarm with his escape theory of suicide.”

“Kwon and colleagues [14] suggested that adolescents become addicted to online games in an attempt to escape from self and reality based on Baumeister’s [15] escape theory.”

“The foreshortened future and other aspects of the woman's attachment-derived thinking are similar to the descriptions of "deconstructed thinking" described by Baumeister (1990) in his description of pre-self-destructive thinking.”

“Linehan (1993) highlighted the role of emotional dysregulation preceding suicide, and both Baumeister (1990) and Beck (1987) posited that increasingly distorted thinking leads an individual to view destructive behaviors as a reasonable option for dealing with intolerable distress.”

“Baumeister (1990) proposed that a marked sense of inferiority triggers the desire to escape from self-awareness and related aversive emotions.”

“According to Baumeister and Leary (1995), people’s need to belong is satisfied by regular interactions within relationships that are characterized by both stability and affective concerns, suggesting that the sociometer should be most active in stable, close relationships.”

“Indeed, self-regulation theorists ( Baumeister, 1990; Kanfer & Hagerman, 1981) and self-efficacy theorists (Bandura, 1986, 1989) have predicted that the link between high standards and affective reactions such as anxiety and stress depends on the presence or absence of certain moderating factors.”

“For instance, Baumeister (1990) has proposed that when one's sense of self is markedly inferior to held * Correspondence to: Matthew K. Nock, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Harvard University 33 Kirkland Street, 1280 Cambridge, MA 02138 Ph: 617−496−4484 Fax: 617−496−9462 E-mail:…”

“Ruminating on our sense of defeat or inferiority can act like a signal of down-rank attack to which we feel increasingly inferior and defeated [60].”

“Though Baumeister (1990) has argued, suicide is very often about escape from pain, like other Durkheimian types, fatalistic suicides refer to a class of suicides that are not limited by specific individual motives.”