Loss of a job or the death of a friend or relative can precipitate thoughts of suicide. At the start of the Great Depression, for example, many people who had suddenly lost great wealth killed themselves. The emotions springing from unfavorable events are hostility, despair, shame, guilt, despondency, and alienation. Dwelling on circumstances while in the grasp of such emotions can lead people to kill themselves. The increase in teenage suicides during the 1980s probably resulted from an element of romantic fantasy combined with hostility toward the immediate world.
Many suicides result from loss of relationships and from loneliness.
Closely related to these emotions is the conviction that the happiness of past years can never be recaptured. Sometimes, terminally ill persons choose to end their lives rather than submit to long, painful declines. However, voters in Washington state in 1991 rejected a proposition to legalize physician-assisted suicide. Nevertheless, Derek Humphry's book 'Final Exit', a guide for terminally ill people who want to commit suicide, became a best-seller that same year. During wartime, suicide rates drop dramatically.