Are women's suicides really different from men's?

The suicide notes of females and males were compared for the presence of 50 classifications (protocol sentences) regarding twelve discrete psychological variables: conscious intention, perturbation, lethality, relations, self-cognitions, truncated cognitions, cognitions regarding an after life, the experience of trauma, fear of insanity, egression, early life stresses, and serial instability. Independent judges noted the incidence of contents corresponding to the protocol sentences in 40 suicide notes, twenty notes for each sex controlled for age. No sex differences were noted. Converging data from Shneidman (1971) and Tomlinson-Keasey, Warren and Elliot (1986) on suicide in gifted women and men was presented to support this negative finding. Although further studies are warranted, it may well be that there are no sex differences on many critical (genotypic) psychological variables in suicide notes and, by implication, suicide.