Eric MarcusWhy Suicide?: Questions and Answers About Suicide, Suicide Prevention, and Coping with the Suicide of Someone You Know

I gave this book a 3 star rating, because I disagree with a few of the comments in the book. No one with a healthy functioning brain can understand the why of suicide, but only under few special circumstances.Most people who committ suicide are physically healthy. Many have what would be considered great lives with wonderful caring family & friends surrounding them. I recently lost my husband to suicide after 46 years of marriage, and never saw it comingHe never informed me that he was contemplating suicide nor did he leave a suicide note. This in no way infers that his suicide was not planned. Often times close family members are like frogs in simmering water. They see small things that are a little abnormal one day, then the next day everything is fine. Almost like a cancer, good & bad days, just not enough bad days to put your thumb on mental illness or severe depression. The only time they realise that there was something terribly wrong is after death. No one with a normal healthy brain is going to contemplate suicide, under any circumstance. A normal healthy brain has the ability to forsee the total devastation they will inflict on the people who love them. The best resource that has helped me tremendously is a handbook called SOS (survivors of suicide)This 30 minute read will help you to understand and help you to get back to living your own life. It's free and you can upload it to your devices. We will never fully understand the mindset of someone who commits suicide, we can't.

My husband took his life, no note or goodbyes. This is an excellent book in helping me understand the possibilities that the my husband was thinking about at the time. I would recommend this to anyone trying to understand. And I also recommended this to my therapist as a way to provide insight to anyone she my be working with. I am sure I will read it again. Note to readers, you may want to have highlighters with you when read this book. I marked so many pages and don’t forget Kleenex too.

This is a very important and helpful book, as easy to read as any work on this difficult subject can be. The breadth is astonishing -- as someone who has been studying suicide for over a year, I can testify to Eric Marcus' gentle handling of many aspects of suicide which are of interest to the general public as well as specialists. His use of stories is compelling as a way to make difficult concepts clear and understandable. He shares generously his own feelings and experiences, but with enough objectivity to make them very helpful to the reader. I highly recommend this book for anyone affected by suicide and that's really all of us.

This is an issue I struggle with. It was very grounding to hear it being described and puzzled over- well, thoroughly and with feeling- by someone standing outside the impulse. He wrote informatively, but never with the feeling that he had understood it and was informing me about it.It was really very good.I am so sorry for the loss the author suffered. I am very grateful for his willingness to explore painful issues in order to help others.

This book is well-written and informative and effectively uses the questions and answers format as a way to discuss many aspects of suicide. Eric Marcus sensitively presents the subject and draws on his own experiences with suicide to inform the reader. This updated edition has the latest studies and statistics on suicide in the United States. The last chapter is a frank and helpful discussion of coping with the suicide of someone close to you. Highly recommended.

As a mother who lost a daughter by suicide a year ago, to understand suicide was very helpful to make sense things did not make sense. It is painful to think "why" but is necessary to process pain of grief.

This book answers a lot of questions about suicide, at least those that can be answered.

This came recommended to me after the recent loss of my brother who took his life by his own hand.

I really like how the book is structured because it helped the reading to flow nicely from one chapter to the next one. The 207 pages - not including the appendix - are written in question and answers format, which I personally felt it's hard for me to stop reading because the flow just made you wanting to know more. Also, the way the questions are selected resonate deeply with my personal experience - I used to live with suicidal thoughts for 1,5 years after losing four family members in 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake followed by a tsunami. I also applauded the selection of the topics for it really added my knowledge around suicide. I am thankful that regardless author' walk of life, he decided to expand his research to include topics such as suicide and the elderly, attempted suicide, and prevention and treatment so the book can reach out to more audiences. Last but not least, this book also provided a profound help for my work preparing FAQs for Youth Helpline service in Puducherry, India.