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.
Death by suicide would fit better. Such as her death was caused by suicide plus death by suicide in its own talks about the state of being dead as it is one of the definitions for it. Hence why asking what someone died from such as “How did they die?” “Their death was suicide” or “Death by suicide” I’ve been lucky not to have anyone I know dear to me kill themselves with the intent of it. But, I have been affected by it in recent years as I had someone close to me who really thought about doing it. Not to mention I’ve thought about it multiple times myself due to mental issues. It’s not pretty and it’s not something to easily walk away from.
I am very happy to take this course about Suicide, this is a deadly disease that has affected millions of people around the world. To be able to start learning new terms is the beginning of learning about Suicide.
Re. my 16th March post, it looks as though I will not be receiving a reply from Charles Raison, the USA psychiatrist cum psychotherapist who in 2012 , was still referring to committing suicide. Very recently, Shirley Umphries informed us that her son “took his own life” and those four words convey a crucial fact, without jarring sensibilities. She fully endorses Stacey Freedenthal’s reasoning against the notion of “completing” suicide. Who could disagree with her conclusion, not least as that notion feels uncomfortably contrived? I recently discovered that in 2010, “committing suicide” was inadvertently added to existing laws on crimes in the United Kingdom (UK). I have drawn that error to the attention of national politicians. They have called for a correction to be made in part because, “As legislators, we should lead by example” on the use of language. A very thought-provoking, powerful and sensitive TV documentary by the British Broadcasting Corporation has been shown a few times in the last year. It is entitled ‘Stopping Male Suicide’ and presented by Dr. Xand (Alexander) Tulleken. Two points in particular demand close attention. The first, is that the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit has an approach to suicide, which reduced the rate by 80% and in one year it had none. The second, is that in the Florida State University, Dr Joseph Franklin claims to have developed technology which can predict with an accuracy of 90%, a few years before they happen, attempts at suicide and deaths from suicide. He and his colleagues claim, “if we are to make progress, we must radically change how we think about, study, and apply knowledge” about psychological problems. The TV documentary can be found via https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bgv82g
I am in total agreement.My son took his own life 21 months ago.He didn’t commit anything,he took his own life.I’ve corrected anyone that uses that terminology,including my grief counselor.Thank you for the education,and I think ,over time, we can change the language.
Excellent article. I am a trainer in suicide prevention techniques and couldn’t agree more that the language definitely matters.
I am so happy there is a place to go here on facebook, 38 years ago no, except telling my friends and neighbors till they were sick of me, I just couldn’t get it out of my system. It does get less as years go by, u have to go on, enjoy your friends and family, even if you’re a 5th wheel. Let yourself move on and be happy.
I agree with John Bradfield that suicide is a life and death issue that transcends “armchair pedantry without thought for it’s potential consequences”. I also believe that criminalizing suicide by common law or by statute is absurd. Every crime has a commensurate punishment – if you jay walk you will get fined. If you rob a bank you will likely get sent to jail. Unless you invoke religion what punishment can anyone impose upon the person who commits suicide? Any common law or statutory punishment is moot. The person who takes their own life or who commits suicide punishes not only themselves, but all who are affected by their action in the same fashion that every action which we take affects ourselves and potentially those around us. If you place suicide into the realm of religion then you enter into an area which has to be interpreted through the prism of that religion. One then has to take into account the notion that it is “my religion and your philosophy”. You then end up going down a rabbit hole where at one extreme (perhaps certain Christian sects) the thought of committing suicide is anathema to one’s religious notions and on the other extreme of Zen Buddhism where one is encouraged to simply observe thoughts as they arise and pass away without developing an attachment to them. I maintain my original idea that suicide is a willful act. I believe that laws against suicide, common law or otherwise are simply absurd. I also believe that the semantics involving suicide should not be used to promulgate the notion that suicide is imposed upon someone. I agree with the fact that mental states can predispose individuals to commit suicide, but I stand by the notion that those individuals commit that action.
I would add to my last post that I am aware that civil penalties can have the potential effect of dissuading people from attempting to commit suicide and that religious considerations can have the same effect – my argument concerns those who successfully carry the action to completion.
I have just posted a reply to John Pollard. I research and write on law relating to bereavements, to empower those struggling with the impacts of deaths, so I’d be grateful if Mo and anyone else could display hard evidence of suicide being a common law crime in any state in the USA.. The fact that it was decriminalised by statute law in the UK in 1961, means that it abolished both the statutory and common law offence. So, the fact that the common law offence may have been created by judges through legal precedents in some distant century, doesn’t mean that it survives indefinitely. New legal precedents and statute law can end common law offences.
The grammar of language is one thing the psychology another. When language is grammatically correct but insults, stigmatizes, perpetuates, reinforces and fails to understand the intensity of distress and may prevent very desperate people seeking help from relatives, friends and others, the last thing they need and the last thing we should be giving them, is lectures on grammar. I have worked with many struggling with suicidal urges, have had responsibility for hospital detentions but never used that power, ensuring instead, that they received sensitised help, from all in a position to give that help. Some did take their own lives and more might have done so, if they had been subjected to talk of committing suicide. The issue, first and foremost, is one of life and death, not one for the luxury of armchair pedantry without thought for its potential consequences.
People commit to things people commit actions. There is nothing inherently wrong with committing to something or committing an act. I can commit to exercising on a regular basis. I can commit the act of brushing my teeth. There is no “sin” or “stigma” to be attached to either of those acts. People commit murder as a conscious willful act. People commit to a marriage as a conscious willful act. People commit suicide as a conscious willful act. A person in a moment of rage can commit the murder of another individual – does that mean that the person committing the murder is mentally ill? (one could make such an argument). A person can commit suicide due to the effects of a profound depressive episode. When the great depression occurred some people committed suicide because they lost all of their money. Some people have committed suicide because they were accused of crimes that humiliated or embarrassed them. Some people who commit suicide are genuinely mentally ill and their mental illness profoundly affects their choice to do so, but many other people commit suicide for reasons that have nothing to do with any type of mental illness.