Defenses Against the Fear of Death in Postsuicide

This study explores the attitudes about death in normal people (n = 156) and patients after recent suicide attempt (n = 185). The group of patients was taken from the department of toxicology at the N. V. Sklifosovsky Research Institute of Emergency Medicine. We view the suicidal act as a mortality salience and hypothesize that those who deny their recent suicide attempt (n = 43) and who have one (n = 105) or several (n = 37) suicide attempts in their personal history exhibit different terror-management patterns in comparison with each other and with the control group. They fall back on different resources with various degrees of effectiveness. Implications of these results for understanding suicidal and postsuicidal behavior are discussed and suggestions for rehabilitation are made.