The last moments of life: Learning to cope

Abstract

A large portion of youthful death in this country is caused by the intentional self‐destructive behavior of individuals who experience helplessness, alienation, loneliness, who suffer from social neglect, and who react to the loss of significant others. Analysts of youthful suicide view such events as being associated with attempts to cope with stress and crisis. This article describes those social forces that shaped the acts of suicide and provides a partial explanation for suicidal behavior among young people. As a strategy employed by the victims to cope with problems in living, suicide is, the author suggests, a plausible response to stress prompted in part by a fatalistic attitude.