The Noonday Demon (90 page)

252
Edwin Shneidman’s description of suicide as murder in the 180th degree is reproduced in George Colt’s
The Enigma of Suicide,
page 196.

252
Freud’s formulation of the death instinct is described in Robert Litman’s essay “Sigmund Freud on Suicide,” in
Essays in Self-Destruction,
Edwin Shneidman, editor, page 336.

252
Karl Menninger’s formulation is cited in George Colt’s
The Enigma of Suicide,
page 201.

252
Chesterton’s lines are in Glen Evans amd Norman L. Farberow’s
The Encyclopedia of Suicide,
page ii.

252
The effects of chronic stress in depleting neurotransmitters have been researched by many people. An excellent summary of these ideas is provided by Kay Jamison’s
Night Falls Fast,
pages 192–93. For more information on the brain’s response to stress, see Robert Sapolsky et al., “Hippocampal damage associated with prolonged glucocorticoid exposure in primates,”
Journal of Neuroscience
10, no. 9 (1990).

253
The work on suicidality and cholesterol is summarized nicely in Kay Jamison’s
Night Falls Fast,
pages 194–95.

253
The work on low levels of serotonin, high numbers of serotonin receptors, inhibition, and suicidality is summarized by John Mann, one of the pioneers in the area, in his “The Neurobiology of Suicide,”
Lifesavers
10, no. 4 (1998). Hermann van Praag’s essay “Affective Disorders and Aggression Disorders: Evidence for a Common Biological Mechanism,” in
The Biology of Suicide,
edited by Ronald Maris, is also an excellent review of the findings to date. For further reading, see Alec Roy’s “Possible Biologic Determinants of Suicide,” in
Current Concepts of Suicide,
edited by David Lester.

253
The information regarding low levels of serotonin in murderers and arsonists may be found in M. Virkkunen et al., “Personality Profiles and State Aggressiveness in Finnish Alcoholics, Violent Offenders, Fire Setters, and Healthy Volunteers,”
Archives of General Psychiatry
51 (1994).

253
There are countless studies of the relationship between low serotonin and animal risk-taking. One particularly strong essay is P. T. Mehlman et al., “Low CSF 5-HIAA Concentrations and Severe Aggression and Impaired Impulse Control in Nonhuman Primates,”
American Journal of Psychiatry
151 (1994). I have also drawn material from a number of articles published in the Across Species Comparison and Psychopathology
ASCAP
newsletters.

253
Levels of norepinephrine and noradrenaline in postsuicide brains have been studied by many researchers. Kay Jamison provides an excellent summary in
Night Falls Fast,
pages 192–93.

253
For more on low levels of essential neurotransmitters, see John Mann, “The Neurobiology of Suicide,”
Lifesavers
10, no. 4 (1998).

253
For an excellent report on Marie Åsberg’s findings, see her “Neurotransmitters and Suicidal Behavior: The Evidence from Cerebrospinal Fluid Studies,”
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
836 (1997).

254
The work on tryptophan hydroxylase is in D. Nielsen et al., “Suicidality and 5-Hydroxindoleacetic Acid Concentration Associated with Tryptophan Hydroxylase Polymorphism,”
Archives of General Psychiatry
51 (1994).

254
Monkeys brought up without mothers have been studied by Gary Kraemer. I have looked specifically at his study “The Behavioral Neurobiology of Self-Injurious Behavior in Rhesus Monkeys: Current Concepts and Relations to Impulsive Behavior in Humans,”
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
836, no. 363 (1997), presented at the NIMH’s Suicide Research Workshop, November 14–15, 1996.

254
Work on early abuse and lowered serotonin is in Joan Kaufman et al., “Serotonergic Functioning in Depressed Abused Children: Clinical and Familial Correlates,”
Biological Psychiatry
44, no. 10 (1998).

254
For more on the link between fetal neurological damage and suicidality, see Kay Jamison’s
Night Falls Fast,
page 183.

254
Comparative male-to-female serotonin levels are described in Simeon Margolis and Karen L. Swartz, “Sex Differences in Brain Serotonin Production,”
The Johns Hopkins White Papers: Depression and Anxiety,
1998, page 14. For in-depth information regarding gender and brain monoamine systems, see Uriel Halbreich and Lucille Lumley, “The multiple interactional biological processes that might lead to depression and gender differences in its appearance,”
Journal of Affective Disorders
29, no. 2–3 (1993).

254
The quotation from Kay Jamison is from her book
Night Falls Fast,
page 184.

254
The link between availability of guns and suicide is published in a variety of studies. I have specifically looked at M. Boor et al., “Suicide Rates, Handgun Control Laws, and Sociodemographic Variables,”
Psychological Reports
66 (1990).

254
The information on gas-related suicide in England is in George Colt’s
The Enigma of Suicide,
page 335.

255
That more Americans kill themselves with guns than are murdered with them every year is in Kay Jamison’s
Night Falls Fast,
page 284. The suicide rates for states according to strictness of gun control laws, as well as the quotation by David Oppenheim, are from George Colt’s
The Enigma of Suicide,
page 336.

255
The statistic for the number of Americans who kill themselves every year with guns was taken from the Centers for Disease Control. An on-line journal offered the following total, the source of which I could not find on the CDC’s Web site: “Figures released on November 18 by the CDC show that the number of suicides using firearms [was] 17,767 in 1997.” See
www.stats.org/statswork/gunsuicide.htm
. A rough estimate can also be calculated using information readily available on the CDC’s Web site. Of the 30,535 people who committed suicide in 1997, the CDC estimates that “nearly 3 out of every 5” of these suicides was committed with a firearm. Calculations using this formula find the total number of firearm suicides to be 18,321. I have chosen 18,000 as an approximate average of these two figures. See the CDC’s Web site at
www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm
.

255
The information on modes of suicide in China is in Kay Jamison’s
Night Falls Fast,
page 140.

255
The information on modes of suicide in Punjab is in
Ibid.,
137.

255
For the rates of suicide among artists, scientists, businessmen, poets, and composers, see
ibid.,
181.

255
The rate of suicide among alcoholics is taken from George Colt’s
The Enigma of Suicide,
page 266.

255
Karl Menninger’s quotation is from
Man Against Himself,
page 184.

257
The experiments on rats crowded together have been carried out by Juan López, Delia Vásquez, Derek Chalmers, and Stanley Watson and were presented at the NIMH’s Suicide Research Workshop, November 14–15, 1996.

257
The work on rhesus monkeys reared without mothers has been carried out by Gary Kraemer. I have specifically looked at his study “The Behavioral Neurobiology of Self-Injurious Behavior in Rhesus Monkeys,” presented at the NIMH’s Suicide Research Workshop, November 14–15, 1996.

257
The story of the suicidal octopus I take from Marie Åsberg.

257
The work on suicide and trauma of early parental death comes from L. Moss and D. Hamilton, “The Psychotherapy of the Suicidal Patient,”
American Journal of Psychiatry
122 (1956).

257
The numbers on suicide attempts and those showing suicide to be the third leading killer among people fifteen to twenty-four in the United States are taken from D. L. Hoyert et al., “Deaths: Final data for 1997. National Vital Statistics Report,” published for the National Center for Health Statistics. It is available on the Web at
www.cdc.gov/ncipc/osp/states/10lc97.htm
. Attempted suicide was estimated by using the NIMH’s statistic that “there are an estimated eight to twenty-five attempted suicides to one completion.” The figure of eighty thousand attempts is therefore, unfortunately, a modest estimate. The NIMH report may be found at
www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/harmaway.cfm
.

257
The catalog of reasons for increased suicidality is taken from George Colt’s
The Enigma of Suicide,
page 49.

258
The work on high-achieving adolescents and suicide is presented in Herbert Hendin’s
Suicide in America,
page 55.

258
The notion that a protected view of death may lead to some young suicides is discussed in Philip Patros and Tonia Shamoo’s
Depression and Suicide in Children and Adolescents,
page 41.

258
For information about suicide rates among men over sixty-five, see Diego de Leo and René F. W. Diekstra’s
Depression and Suicide in Late Life,
page 188.

258
The notion that the elderly use particularly lethal technologies for suicide and are particularly secretive about it is from
Ibid.

259
Higher suicide rates among divorced or widowed men are discussed in
Ibid.

259
On the development of motor problems, hypochondria, and paranoia among the elderly as a consequence of depression, see
Ibid.,
24.

259
On the elderly depressed and somaticization, see Laura Musetti et al., “Depression Before and After Age 65: A Reexamination,”
British Journal of Psychiatry
155 (1989): 330.

259
The comparative international suicide rates, which place Hungary at the top of the list with a suicide rate of 40 per 100,000 and Jamaica at the bottom with a rate of 0.4 per 100,000 can be found in Eric Marcus’s
Why Suicide?
pages 25–26.

259
Kay Jamison’s catalog of suicide techniques is in her book
Night Falls Fast,
pages 133–34.

263
The WHO position on suicide as a “suicidal act with a fatal outcome” is detailed in their report,
Prevention of Suicide.

263
Kay Jamison’s quotation is in
Night Falls Fast,
page 39.

263
A. Alvarez’s quotation is in
The Savage God,
page 89.

263
Albert Camus’s quotation is in
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays,
page 5.

263
Julia Kristeva’s quotation is in
Black Sun,
page 4.

263
Edwin Shneidman’s formulation of the five causes of suicide is taken from his book
The Suicidal Mind.
The direct quotation is from pages 58–59.

264
The Kay Jamison quotation occurs in
Night Falls Fast,
page 74.

265
On Kay Jamison’s description of her state of mind during her own suicide attempt, see
Ibid.,
291. She has also published a memoir of her battles with manic-depressive illness, entitled
An Unquiet Mind.

265
The suicide note is taken from Kay Jamison’s
Night Falls Fast,
page 292.

266
The quotation from Edna St. Vincent Millay is from her “Sonnet in Dialectic,” in
Collected Sonnets,
page 159.

268
I have written about my mother’s death at some length in the past. I described it in a
New Yorker
story on euthanasia, and it was the basis for the eleventh chapter of my novel,
A Stone Boat.
I have chosen to write about it for what I hope will be the last time because it is part of my story as it exists in this book. I beg the indulgence of readers familiar with my earlier work.