Citation

Lester D. Soc. Psychiatry 1971; 6(2): 80-82.

Affiliation

Suicide Prevention and Crisis Service, Buffalo, N. Y., USA

Copyright

(Copyright © 1971, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/BF00578034

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The relationship between the incidences of suicide and homicide was examined by means of correlations over time, locale, and status categories. The resulting correlations differed greatly for the three methods of correlation. For each type of correlation, correlation coefficients were computed for different sex-by-race subgroups of the population and the magnitude and direction of the associations were found to vary greatly for the different subgroups. It was noted that previous investigators of the relationship between suicide and homicide have presented only certain of the correlations illustrated here and thus are guilty of bias in their presentation of data. It was concluded that no available theory was able to explain the complex pattern of correlations found here and the more fruitful approach to the study of the relationship between suicide and homicide was through a socio-psychological study of the individuals concerned.