[On the unpredictability of suicide]

Suicide has become one of the main reasons of professional liability proceedings for psychiatrists. It is a widespread belief that suicide is a systematic expression of mental illness and that, as for many diseases is preventable by appropriate means. There is a lack of research data that can enable the identification of clinically useful variables to identify suicide risk, even in people who have already made a suicide attempt. Unfortunately, these convictions have led and lead to judgments of professional responsibility for psychiatrists that are not based on scientific data, but on social needs related to feelings of frustration and helplessness that develop after a suicide and by the urge to compensate in some way the family of suicide victim. Suicide is too complex a phenomenon to be reported to a causality beyond any reasonable certainty as instead required by the criminal law, neither can be faced with a progressive patients loss of freedom of our patients.