People in the suicide prevention field discourage the use of the term “committed suicide.” The verb “commit” (when followed by an act) is generally reserved for actions that many people view as sinful or immoral. Someone commits burglary, or murder, or rape, or perjury, or adultery, or crime – or something else bad.
Suicide itself might be bad, yes, but the person who dies by suicide is not committing a crime or sin. Rather, the act of suicide almost always is the product of mental illness, intolerable stress, pain, or trauma.
To portray suicide as a crime or sin stigmatizes those who experience suicidal thoughts or attempt suicide. This stigma, in turn, can deter people from seeking help from friends, family, and professionals.
As Susan Beaton and colleagues note in their article, “Suicide and Language: Why We Shouldn’t Use the ‘C’ Word”:
“Suicide is not a sin and is no longer a crime, so we should stop saying that people ‘commit’ suicide. We now live in a time when we seek to understand people who experience suicidal ideation, behaviours and attempts, and to treat them with compassion rather than condemn them.”
“Completed Suicide” vs. “Died by Suicide”
Warning: I am a word geek. I love language, and I also love discussing its intricacies. Some will deride this discussion of suicide terminology as political correctness gone awry. But language has power. If changing our language can help suicidal people to feel safer asking for help, then changing language can save lives.
With that said, I prefer the term “died by suicide” because it avoids the judgmental connotations of “committed suicide.”
Some people advocate for using the term “completed suicide” instead. I urge people not to use the term “completed” suicide. I explained my objections to the term in this post, and they bear repeating.
What’s Wrong with the Term “Completed Suicide”
Think of the sense of accomplishment you feel when you complete a big project. Then think of the disappointment you feel when you don’t.
Completion is good. Dying prematurely is usually a tragedy.
To complete something conveys success; to leave something incomplete conveys failure. In fact, at universities, if a student receives an “incomplete” in a class and doesn’t complete their remaining requirements on time, the “I” converts to an “F.”
Some suicide prevention advocates use the term “completed suicide” because they view it as an acceptable alternative to “committed suicide.” Not all suicide prevention advocates agree, of course. The State of Maine’s Suicide Prevention Program, for example, states on its website, “Both terms (committed and completed) perpetuate the stigma associated with suicide and are strongly discouraged.”
The term “completed suicide” is especially popular among academics. A search on Google Scholar yields 470 articles where “completed suicide” is used in the title. Here are just a few examples:
- “Characteristics of Completed Suicides,” in the Psychiatric Times
- “Risk of Completed Suicide in 89,049 Young Males Assessed by a Mental Health Professional,” in European Neuropsychopharmacology
- “Suicidal Ideation and Subsequent Completed Suicide in Both Psychiatric and Non-Psychiatric Populations: A Meta-Analysis,” in Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences
Those examples actually bring me to a different complaint about the term “completed suicide.” When “completed” is used as an adjective for suicide (instead of a verb), it is redundant.
Characteristics of completed suicides = characteristics of suicides.
Risk of completed suicide = risk of suicide.
Subsequent completed suicide = subsequent suicide.
Completed suicide is suicide. Why not just say “suicide,” then?
More about the Term “Died by Suicide”
The Associated Press dictates the standards for appropriate language in most mainstream newspapers and magazines (but not academic journals). The AP changed its style book recently to discourage the use of the phrase “committed suicide.” Instead, it recommends alternative terms like “killed himself,” “took her life,” and “died by suicide.”
I have no objections to any of these terms. As a direct substitute for “committed suicide,” I prefer “died by suicide.” I’ve heard only a couple complaints about this term, and none is that it perpetuates stigma against people who die by suicide, as the term “committed suicide” does, or that it portrays the act of suicide as an accomplishment, as the term “completed suicide” does.
The first complaint is that “died by suicide” is a little clunky. Usually, we say somebody died of something (like, “she died of cancer”) not by something. Suicide is different, I guess, because the term “died by her own hand” also is in the vernacular.
The second complaint I’ve heard from folks, especially my students, is that “died by suicide” is an unfamiliar term and hard to get used to using. It doesn’t roll off the tongue.
Over time, the more you substitute the term “died by suicide,” the more natural it becomes. Likewise, over time, the more you say “died by suicide,” the more the term “committed suicide” will hurt your ears.
And if you’re like me, “completed suicide” will hurt your ears even worse. So please, I urge you, say something else.
Copyright 2017 by Stacey Freedenthal, PhD, LCSW. Written for SpeakingOfSuicide. All Rights Reserved. Photos purchased from Fotolia.com.
Ugh… going through this in graduate school. I was corrected for using commit, and was told to use the term complete. Well, sorry I will not! In my mind, the person has infact committed a crime. They have selfishly left spouses, children, parents behind to fend for themselves while living a life time of pain. So yes, they are criminal and trust me, they will never be offended with what ever terminology we use. We need to stop with the PC, BS, become big boys and girls and tell it how it is.
Joel I agree with you on the statement that people commit suicide. I think that the PC need to avoid the honest truth makes very little sense. I disagree with the notion that people who commit suicide have committed a crime. Committing a crime comes with the possibility of being punished for the action committed. A person who commits suicide can’t be punished for their action, except to the extend that their committing suicide robs them of their lives – they have punished themselves by their action. One could invoke a deity and have the belief that those who commit suicide will suffer some punishment at the hands of such a deity , but then one has to involve religion and their is no end to that argument.
@Joel When you said you’re “going through this in school,” do you mean in preparation to become a mental health care provider? Thanks for sharing, if you’re still reading these comments.
Dear Linda and Tom,
I am responding to your separate posts of the 11th August 2019. For reasons unknown, the dates of posts as displayed on my computer in the UK are not in date order, so it is hard to see a coherent flow to the discussion.
Long ago, sociologists identified different types of suicide or rather different reasons for suicides. One of those was altruistic, e.g. during a shortage of food, children being fed and the oldest adults opting to die. At the other extreme, as one of you has mentioned, are mass murderers who take their own lives to escape the consequences.
As far as I am aware, all or virtually all posts are not about extremes but ordinary people who are or were living ordinary lives, who are or were struggling with strong suicidal urges.
I am sure that if armchair critics had to meet face-to-face with the vast majority of those, they would not be confronted with deeply hurtful language or judgmental lectures. Bad lecturers use their own language and may entertain even though they do not educate, good teachers adapt their language to maximise learning and good ‘therapists’ shape their language to maximise health benefits.
When entirely unnecessary, insensitive language could amount to psychological violence. There is no evidence that I know of, which proves that psychological violence solves most mental anguish or most crimes.
A nuanced notion of having “committed” suicide, comes with historical baggage. The families of those who suffered bereavements following suicides, had their homes and possessions taken from them and were made destitute.
In more recent times up until 1961 in the UK., most of those who made attempts to end their own lives, woke up in a hospital with a police officer nearby, ready to prosecute them.
The good old days did not have solutions for preventing suicides.
For pointers to some researched prevention methods, see the TV documentary mentioned in my 23rd May 2019 post.
As for “committing” people to institutions, that was often criminal for reasons of corruption, fraud and political flavour of the century.
Women were locked away for disobeying men but they were not locked away for disobeying women. Only women were locked away for having babies outside marriage. Ignoring clear criminality, even though more than 50% of the fathers may have been responsible for the babies, only the mothers were locked away.
Criminals faced juries and had fixed term jail sentences. Those “committed” to institutions had no such luxuries. I discovered a man long locked in a hospital ward, with an effective life sentence. He was supposedly mentally ill and violent. However, medical staff did not tell me that every week for many years, he had been going unaccompanied to a social club in the local town. He annually went on holiday with club members and would go off on his own with some of their children. He had no record of mental illness or violence before being locked away and his medical records made no mention of mental illness or violence. He had been “committed” by the police, for stealing a pint of milk off a doorstep, due to hunger and homelessness.
Situations like those were typical of people who had been “committed”.
Yes Linda, you had a “very romantic” notion of suicide because it had nothing to do with real people and real experiences. Having the “Riot Act” read to you, changed you “on the spot”. However, I am sure you do not believe for a moment, that having it read to you again, would relieve you of the weight of anger which shines through your post. Incidentally, celebrate your name which derives from Lind, the small-leaved lime tree, which is mostly confined the oldest and most precious woodlands in the UK.. Lind is connected with every Latin name given to all life on earth, because of how Carl Linnaeus came to get his last name.
What’s next, destigmatize murder or pedophilia because calling it a crime or a sin deters people from getting help for their compulsions? Come to think of it, suicide is self murder. Must we accomadate every behavior no matter how destructive the behavior is. As a young girl I thought suicide was very romantic and even noble after watching Hollywood’s movie, Romeo and Juliet. That is until my mother got wind of the ridiculousness, sat me down and read me the riot act and stated there is no excuse and no reason ever for suicide. Life is too precious. Changed me on the spot. I can’t get over how convulted,how sick our reasoning has become in this culture.
There was a time in China when crime was extremely rare . Families were shunned and greatly shamed if a member of their family broke a law. Families disowned family members and had nothing to do with those who selfishly brought them shame. The result was there was basically no murder, theft etc.
Accomodate it and incidents will soar. No doubt in our society many will say that is just fine. Sick.
We don’t have a suicide unless someone discovers the body.The impact that can have is to create a new victim,be it a family member or members of the public if the suicide for example is carried out on a Hwy or Park.Sadly the rate of suicide has skyrocketed,at the same time authors such as Stacey are getting at the core root of the problem by playing round with words they find distasteful.My point is people learn about mental illness , learn about depression, learn about what makes people take their own lives.Dont waste your time playing with words,with a suicide rate that’s rising sky high at the same time.
You state that suicide is not a crime or a sin. Still, you say suicide is “bad.” It’s the same as sin – it’s making a moral judgment. Suicide is not always bad.