Cries for Help

Nowhere in the world is suicide, or the threat of suicide, taken more seriously than in Los Angeles. Though several U.S. cities have first-aid stations for those seeking help to save themselves from self-destruction, only Los Angeles has a full-fledged Suicide Prevention Center.

Financed by the National Institutes of Health to the tune of $100,000 a year, the S.P.C. keeps a staff of eight constantly on the alert. Its telephone (CApitol 5-2388) jangles on an average of 2,500 times a year, often with calls from people reporting that a relative or friend--usually meaning the caller himself--is contemplating suicide. At least nine times out of ten an answering psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker or skilled secretary is able to talk the caller out of immediate action and arrange an appointment. Only rarely are the police alerted to trace a phone call and race to the caller's home while he is kept talking. Marilyn Monroe was addicted to making periodic phone calls asking for help from her analyst and friends. But the night she died, she did not call the S.P.C., where the telephone is manned the clock around, seven days a week.

Facts & Fables. The S.P.C. was founded in 1958 by a pair of Veterans Administration psychologists, Drs. Edwin S. Shneidman and Norman L. Farberow, after they discovered that the Los Angeles county coroner's office had been filing suicide notes for years and had amassed more than 700 of them. By mining and refining this lode of research ore, the

psychologists were able to establish some general truths about suicide. Examples: > A person who threatens suicide is a definite risk. In many cases he will do just what he says; practically everybody who attempts suicide gives some warning of his intent.

>The incidence of suicide is not related to the season, the day of the week, the weather, or the phases of the moon.

>Relatively few of those who try to take their own lives suffer from the crippling mental illnesses classed as psychoses. The only emotional disturbance common to nearly all of them is depression, with the danger greatest just when they seem to be recovering.

Layman's Guide. Psychologists Shneidman and Farberow reported their technical findings in a book, Clues to Suicide (McGraw-Hill; 1957), and put out a lay man's guide to suicide prevention in The Cry for Help (McGraw-Hill; 1961).

Along with Psychiatrist Robert E. Litman, medical director of the S.P.C., and other professional staff members, they are enrolled as deputy L.A. coroners. They conduct psychological and psychiatric examinations in selected cases among the county's 8,000-a-year suicides, attempted suicides and suspected suicides.*Last week Coroner Theodore J. Curphey picked Litman and Farberow to study all the available evidence and tell him as much as anybody possibly could about what had been going on in Marilyn Monroe's mind before her death.

*Suicide ranks as the eleventh most common cause of death in the whole U.S. population, but fourth (after cancer) in white males aged 25-45. Death certificates record 20,000 cases (three-fourths of them men) annually. But many authorities believe the actual number is two or three times as great, because many suicides are never detected or are deliberately misrepresented as accidental deaths in order to collect insurance or to spare relatives.

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