Suicide Risk Potential: A Comparison of Psychiatric Patients and Normal Controls in Pakistan

Suicide as a word is of origin in the English Language, derived from the modern Latin suiciduim, which in turn stems from the Latin pronoun for ‘self ’ and verb ‘to kill’. American Psychiatric Association [1] has illustrated a number of suiciderelated key terms, such as: suicide that is self imposed death with confirmation that the person intended to die by killing himself; suicidal ideation which comprised on thoughts those are serving as the representative of one’s own death; suicidal attempt means the behaviors those are self-injurious with a fatal outcome and accompanied by evidence that the person wants to die; suicidal intend means person’s subjective expectation and a desire for a self-destructive act to end their life; deliberate self-harm means willful self-inflicting, painful, destructive, or injurious acts that lacks intent to die. In the current research, the word suicidal tendencies is employed which according to Cull and Gill [2] refers to the suicide risk potential of an individual, based on aggregate of suicidal ideation, hopelessness, negative self-evaluation and hostility.