"Psychogenic" Death: A Reappraisal

Abstract

Social, economic, and medical variables correlated with "psychogenic" death rates across about 30 countries. However, McClelland's psychological motives of achievement, affiliation, and power, determined for each country by content analysis of children's stories, did not. Status integration correlated positively with homicide and negatively with deaths from suicide and ulcers. Low life expectancy, wealth, economic growth, wine consumption, and zinc (cadmium) consumption correlated with deaths from homicide, suicide, ulcers, cirrhosis and hypertension, respectively.