Suicide Assessment and Terminology

Letter to the Editor

Sir: Elliott et al. (December 1996 issue) presented some
extremely interesting and helpful findings. However, I must
quibble on two points.

First, the authors report collecting a set of variables including
the "presence of an ambivalent emotional reactor [sic] to
the suicide attempt," which they assessed by using two closed
questions ("Are you glad you survived?" and "Do you wish you
would have [sic] died?").