Evening star., 1933-06-04
BY M4DELIN BLTTZSTETN.

N the Spring, the poets have always con-
tended a young mans fancy naturally
turns to thoughts of love. Autumn, on the
other hand has inspired verses fraught
with despair and melancholy.
But now science, postmaster Of diSillu-
sion comes to pierce another bubble The poets
are all wrong. Spring, and not Autumn, gives
men and women the creeps and fills them with
q desire to end it all
June may be the month of mating, but it Is
also the high tide of suicides.
Strange as it may sound, there are definite
seasons and fashions for self-destruction just
az there are for everything else. Suicides begin
to increase from the beginning of January and
reach their greatest peak about the middle of
June when they begin to fall.
This is only one of many queer facts about
suicide that need explanation.
Why do certain methods for self destruction,
like the newest one of leaping from tall build
ings. suddenly become popular in preference to
old-estabiished ones like drowning and poison?
Why do waves of suicide seem to strike certain
areas in almost epidemic fashion?
no educated or ignorant people, married or
- single folk, young old men, attempt
suicide in greater numbers? How do men COM
pare with women in frequency and methods?
Is q man who is about to commit suicide nee
essarily insane? And can a prospective suicide
life If he happens to get sound advice at the
crucial moment?
Suicide is distinctly on the increase in Amer
ica-last year more than 10000 deaths and
more than twice many unsuccessful attempts
were recorded. The recollection of the suicides
of such prominent men as George Eastman,
the camera magnate; Ivar Kreuger, the match
king: Ralph Barton, the cartoonist; Jules Pas
Gin, the painter, and Sir Henry Alfred McCardie
the famous British jurist and birth-control
advocate is fresh in all our memories.
In order to try to throw new light upon its
mysteries minute clinical study is being con-
Quoted by DR.. Edward A. Strecker, professor
of psychiatry in the School Of Medicine at the
University of Pennsylvania.
DR. Streckers position chief of staff and
consultant at the Institute for Nervous Diseases
of the Pennsylvania Hospital, as well as his
connection with the pSychopathic department
Of the Philadelphia General Hospital. give him
the opportunity for daily contact with men and
women who verging on the borderand OF
insanity and suicide.
In this special study, begun about a year ago
under a grant from the University of Penn
syivania, DR.. Strecker and his assistant, DR..
Edward Hoedemaker are taking detailed clinical
histories of several hundred suicidal cases; men
and women who have attempted to do away
with themselves without success as well as
others who have expressed definite desire to
end It all
Before even attempting to discuss such a
study as ours" DR.. Strecker explained, I'VE
must remember two important things
First, never really know what mo-
tivated the man who succeeded in killing him.
self unless he leaves a document whose con-
tents we are willing to believe at their face
value We can anayze only would-be and
unsuccessful suicides
uNNE way in which this strong instinct is
~ negatived is by mental disease, not only
in the form of meanchoiia but in all other
abnormalities. But 1 do not think that all
suicides are abnormal
MY experience in this study proves it other
WISE and q careful observation of the history
Of suicides will think, bear me out. Can you
the man urhn tak his because