he will ultimately succeed in bringing about his own death. SPC notes that once the pattern is begun suicide attempts occur in the individual with increasing frequency, and the pattern must be broken if the life is to be saved. The love, attention, understanding of family and friends can make the difference. But where they are either not available or are too weak, this is the point when professional help should be brought into the picture. This is where a clinic like the SPC can do direct life-saving work.

The charge at the clinic is very small, but a charge has been found to be an important factor in making the patient feel he has a reason for talking to the doctors, taking the tests, going through the therapy. He has lost, after all, the reason that is basic to all normal people when they visit a doctor-the desire to live. Or, to be more exact, the desire to die is temporarily outweighing the desire

to live. The clinic seeks to set the balance right again.

To give the patient hope and purpose is a foremost aim at Suicide Prevention Clinic. When the love and counsel of friends and family have failed or worse, where they have never been given, the clinic attempts to help the individual regain his sense of perspective and of the value of continuing to live. The clinic does not always succeed, but it has the virtues of understanding and sympathy along with the special techniques it has evolved, to make its chances of success high.

Are there certain types of people

more apt to commit suicide than other types? It would seem, from a very interesting and complex essay, "Orientations Toward Death" by Dr. Schneidman (in the book The Study of Lives, edited by Robert W. White, 1963), that the heavy drinker, the fast driver, the so-called accident prone individual, "the diabetic who 'mismanages' his diet or his insulin, the individual

with cirrhosis who 'mismanages' his alcoholic intake, the Berger's disease patient who 'mismanages' his nicotine intake" are suicidal potentialities, managing the act over a period sometimes of years, but in fact killing themselves none the less.

While there are no statistics isolating homosexual from heterosexual suicides, the fact of the widespread belief among homosexuals that selfdestruction is common to their kind has prompted this article. Dr. Litman writes: "Often the attitudes of spouse, relative or friend may mean the difference between life or death

for persons involved in symbiotic [emotionally dependent] relationships."

The family of the homosexual who lives at home often does not know of his sexual bent. This makes relation-

ships awkward. The ships awkward. The family cannot help effectively in the individual's

moments of emotional crisis or crackup. That same lack of communicativeness that often marks the dangerously potential suicide is difficult to detect where confidences have not normally been shared and where emotional problems have been given no expression.

The homosexual who depends for outlet upon different pickups and a constant change of partners often lacks real friends to observe changes in his behavior patterns that signal danger. The most fortunate of homosexuals, he with a permanent relationship, is sometimes, when death takes his partner, least fortunate. A close relation-

ship of this kind often tends to eliminate family contacts and to keep other friendships peripheral. This means that the bereaved has no one close to turn to at a time of stress, no one who can intelligently note his moves toward seeking death himself and who can gently deflect him.

Except in cities where suicide clinics exist.

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