Shneidman Quotes

There are many pointless deaths, but there can never be a needless suicide.

There’s no spirit or soul. I will be dead. Get that through your thick head. I’ll be dead. And I live, in quotation marks, in my children, in my DNA, in my books, in my reputation. It’s as simple as that.

Each suicidal drama occurs in the mind of a unique individual.

Each day contains the threat of failure and assaults by others, but it is the threat of self-destruction that we are most afraid to touch, except in our secret moments or the hidden recesses of our minds.

I would like to address every person I know individually, but as a person who doesn’t care about anything, I guess it’s difficult to care enough to spend the time to do that.

I found few people who either occasionally gave me some joy,

It’s over. Finally over. I will do it now.

I hope I have taken enough to finish this.

Leave my body alone.

I’m alert, but I just feel like shit.

Vomited. Damn it. I just threw up a shitload of lithium. There were

At times I was a faculty psychiatrist asked to treat troubled medical students. I found that treating a suicidal medical student who carried the hopes and aspirations of family and school was stressful.

Most suicidal people don’t have a sense of what will come next. In particular, writes Edwin Shneidman, “The idea of Hell does not ordinarily enter into suicide . . . The destination (or concern) is not to go anywhere, except away.