Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Mind
-
The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
Read More »
[Below is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]
With the recent suicide of Nicholas Hughes we are tempted to think there might be heritability in taking one’s life. Since his mother, the poet Sylvia Plath, stuck her head in a gas oven a year after he was born.
A 2005 longitudinal study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry showed that children of mothers who attempted suicide were significantly more at risk of suicide than children of mothers who were not suicidal.
And a 2003 study in the same journal concluded from a Swedish survey that the rate of suicide is twice as high in families of suicide victims than in families with no suicide.
But such studies show correlation, not causal connection.
And while a 2007 review from The Middle-European Journal of Medicine concludes that suicide is significantly more frequent among identical twins versus fraternal twins, pinpointing the genetic link is difficult.
One problem is distinguishing genes associated with suicide from those associated with suicide-related mental illness. But a 2009 paper in Biological Psychiatry proposes that the suicidal traits that may be genetically-linked are aggression and impulsivity, early-onset depression and stress hormone levels.
Whether Hughes inherited a suicidal tendency is unknown. But he suffered from depression and had significant life trauma. Not only did his mother commit suicide, his father’s second lover, Assia Wevill, also committed suicide, by asphyxiation from a gas stove. Curiously, she died 40 years ago to the very day—when Hughes decided to take his own life.
—Christie Nicholson
NOTE: Other studies in the past year suggest that links to suicide may be due to a reduction in the number of receptors in the brain for the neurotransmitter GABA. Interestingly, the number of GABA receptors is not related to a genetic mutation, but is thought to be epigenetic, meaning the expression of genes is affected by life experience. For more on this study and further research on the causes of suicide, please see The Origins of Suicidal Brains.
60-Second Psych is a weekly podcast. Subscribe to this Podcast: RSS | iTunes
See what we're tweeting about
11 Comments
Add CommentThis is just sad. I hope research on this subject has contributed to the success of treatment options (or will).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuch pernicious nonsense! Some families believe in burial, others go for cremation. It's a moral choice that children learn from the parents' beliefs. If one were to make a study of genetics, they must be getting kickbacks.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDear elesmack, you forgot to preface your statement with "as every Medieval theologian knows..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy just families, may be it runs over specific geographical regions during specific time interval. In central India many farmers have committed suicide and reason that was given for it was their economic problems. But Indian farmers have faced economic problems since many generations or, say hundreds of years, but tendency to commit suicide seems to be new.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<a href="http://www.noprescription-needed.com/" title="No Prescription Needed">No Prescription Needed</a>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.noprescription-needed.com ------> No Prescription Needed
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSuicide, like any other events in our lives, is programmed by our creator, and never preventable if it is to occur. The belief that we are allowed to control our destinies is absurd. Everything that happens, happens to whom it is supposed to happen, exactly under the circumstances it should happen. Otherwise we could control events that create resulting events. For instance, we could stop all illness or wars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe premise of that Bio Psych paper is that there's a suicide "diathesis" or predisposition independent of suicide "related to" - I guess meaning secondary to or "caused" by - mental illness. If I'm reading it right, the authors then claim to find an association between suicide and early onset major depression, among other traits. So I guess the idea is that an underlying personality trait might cause suicidal tendency as well as, separately, major depression. If so, that's interesting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe premise of that Bio Psych paper seems to be that there's a suicide "diathesis" or predisposition independent of suicide "related to" - I guess meaning secondary to or "caused" by - mental illness. If I'm reading the abstract right, the authors then claim to find an association between suicide and early onset major depression, among other traits. So I guess the idea is that an underlying personality trait might cause suicidal tendency as well as, separately, major depression. If so, that's interesting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as my understanding, suicide is not much to do with family legacy, or inherited traits may be this influence the suicidal decission but this cannot be the root cause of suicide. It seems that, the cause of making decission to suicide is not because his mother has did, but may be for some other reason, like failure in getting satifaction for a particular desire. So from my point of view, the important direction for continuining research is to find out the root cause like, what is the reason for unneccesary desires.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the idea, from a research pov, is that there may be specific mental illness that may be linked to higher rate of suicide, and that there may also be a way to distinguish between the biological makeup of someone who has committed suicide and also suffers from these specific mental illnesses. So yes, to the above comment: "So I guess the idea is that an underlying personality trait might cause suicidal tendency as well as, separately, major depression. If so, that's interesting."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut of course it's far more complicated and nuanced. Mental illness is one part of the issue perhaps--but the other is psychological trauma and one's environment. Considering suicide is on the rise in the U.S. (see http://is.gd/poA7) it is worth funding/supporting research into this complicated and serious issue.