Suicide

by Roman Espejo (Editor)

Suicide takes the lives of more than 30,000 Americans every year and is the third leading cause of death for those between the ages of fifteen and twenty four. In this all-new anthology, authors debate the causes and possible solutions to this problem in the following Is Suicide Ever Acceptable? What are the Causes of Teen Suicide? Should Assisted Suicide Be Legalized? How Can Suicide Be Prevented?

Genres: Nonfiction

207 pages, Hardcover

First published March 19, 2003

Reviews

[No, David! No! · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am still trying to find a book on suicide that I find useful. So far, Myths About Suicide and How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me: One Person's Guide to Suicide Prevention are the two best I have found. This one unfortunately fell short.

I liked the idea behind this book. The editor chose (and abridged) articles by many different people to show multiple perspectives on the topic. I had hoped this would be a unique and broad-based view of suicide.

My first issue was that the book isn't primarily about suicide. Instead, most of the chapters / articles focused on physician-assisted suicide. While a few of the authors dealt with the idea of suicide in general, only one seemed to even broach the idea of non-voluntary "psych holds" at hospitals.

The second concern I had was that many of the chosen articles tended to the extreme. I understand that the editor created a broader view of the topic by going to the furthest edges. However, without including some middle ground, many of the articles became almost laughable with hyperbole. I would like to have seen at least a couple of articles that took a "resolution" point-of-view.

The search continues...

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to get a lot of good information out of this book. I love the concept of opposing viewpoints. Unfortunately, for me, the anti arguments were not valid as they all seemed to go back to religious views. Not being religious myself, I did not find their arguments at all compelling and found myself skipping sections one they started talking about the Bible.