Last September I was stalled (stopped) by concerns - real or imaginary - about potential defamation/copyright issues re manuscript after London firm (N) accepted my manuscript (rather too readily and without comment, which was a bit odd). THey also required 100% indemnity re contents before proceeding! Since then no change. I chose to go no further with "the London publisher" since it left me at potential risk. Could be most publishers will seek a similar waiver before going ahead. We'll see. My superviser MT suffered a bereavement in December '22 and I've not made contact since. I contacted LM, a published author, but a vicious illness (chest infection mid-December/mid-January '23) immobilised me and paused progress on that. Was rejected by Belfast publisher (B-H): '. . . the submitted material was narrowly focused on an academic discussion of disciplinary boundaries , , , this would not appeal to a general audience . . .' Also they said my manuscript was 'unsuitable' because it didn't address Ireland (their 'brand') sufficiently. They only sampled a cupla chapters. If they'd read more, they'd have seen that its locus was largely suicide in N Ireland with RoI/GB references too but clearly insufficient for them. Fair enough. Also rejected by another NI publisher rather curtly - my manusctipt sample did not match their brand. Fair enough. Made contact with a Belfast guy JOR whose expertise seemed to be as proof-reader - his estimate for my 377 page / 143,000 word manuscript was in five figures. I bid him an Aussi g'dy. I must try to ensure that any publisher (or editor, proof-reader etc) is as interested in and committed to the resolution of suicide's enigma as I am and have been this past three decades.
Bit of a brainwave during January 23! Found an outfit (H-G) whose major interest (among others) was suicide prevention. Contacted them re their journal (I'm a subscriber for a wheen of years) and mentioned my manuscript. Long story short, they expressed interest. I prepared a 'book proposal' (several weeks work) under their guidance. Sent it off this week, late March '23. Fingers crossed. More follows.

I just accidentally deleted my initial thoughts. So here goes again. I discussed this key issue with my supervisor yesterday. She is one of only three readers of the entire manuscript's 373 A4 size pages. The others are a London publisher's editor and me fein. A cupla others have read a chapter or two. Only one glaring error was pointed out to me so far and I immediately recast the relevant sentence. What has brought all of this to the forefront of my mind is a reference in a publisher's terms & conditions that would require me ("the author") to indemnify the publisher regarding "any and all" actions and claims in libel and/or defamation (L&D) against them regarding any of the manuscript's published contents. It would have been far from my mind in researching and composing the manuscript that I would have libelled or defamed anyone or any organision. But my intentions would count for nought in any such legal actions. There would be an onus on me to disprove any related allegation against me by a claimant. So, before instructing a publisher - and forwarding a substantial sum to them in the region of £5,000 - I must construct a resilient, defensive rampart against any claims. Three options exist.

First, I can invite a Belfast lawyer, expert in the L&D field to advise me. This could involve a four figure fee. Next, I could rely upon the publisher's editors to alert me to any obvious risks in advance of publication. Their documentation does not appear to offer this friendly service. Finally - and this option seems to me to be the best, perhaps the only practical and economical one - I can, starting today, review, and recast as necessary, the complete manuscript in order to gain as much confidence as I can, that the manuscript's publication will not land me in Belfast's Royal Courts of Justice at risk of serious financial outlays. I'm presently in my 82nd year and hope to leave my son a few shillings 'when I shuffle off this mortal coil'. Best to minimise any expenditure beyond the publisher's £5k, some of which might be recoverable if the manuscript's transition into a paperback on a shelf in Waterstone's or No Alibis, generates any 'royalties'. A hopeful note on which to end the epistle. More anon.              

I am awaiting feedback from a tentative London 'publisher of new authors' on my 373 page draft manuscript - "Death by suicide etc." following its dispatch by email to them on 12 August 2022, just over a cupla weeks ago. I lately (viz. ten days ago) found an article ["How to avoid Libel and Defamation as an Author" by Orna Ross, from selfpublishingadvice.org] about that L & D subject. Potential liability in L & D exists in any published written material, including websites, blogs, articles, pamphlets and books, where a person or organisation alleges they were wronged.

A person / organisation is libelled if a publication:
i) discredits them in their trade, business, or profession;
ii) exposes them to hatred, ridicule or contempt;
iii) causes them to be shunned or avoided; and / or
iv) lowers them in the eyes of society.
(Ross, 2021)

The test of libel in a court is "what a reasonable reader is likely to take as [the] natural or ordinary meaning of the published content in their full context". What the writer intended, as author or publisher, is irrelevant.

Thing is my take on suicide challenges some conventional views, opinions, statements, claims and assertions. Each of these position statements may be capable of being attributed to, or stated or repeated by a person or organisation. And therein lies the rub - check Hamlet's soliloquy. If any content is found (by a publisher or later by a reader) that allegedly libels or defames a person or organisation, then the author loses [unless he proves otherwise] and will be liable to pay them damages/costs as determined by the court. Lesson: avoid at all costs. This story will run for a while. More later.

Managed to open these 'blog' pages - not without 'usual' (?) issues with Dr Google's pedantic mania for exactitude. What did not surprise me though was a PA media article in today's online Guardian focusing upon funding resource issues allegedly linked to missed follow-up psychiatry appointments by patients on release from hospital. Just to ensure that an alleged cause/effect notion was not missed by readers, a following sentence in the article, albeit indirectly, linked suicide incidence to this 'missed appointments' resource issue:
 "The latest data from the Office for National Statistics said 4,912 suicides were registered in 2020 in England, with the male suicide rate at 15.3 per 100,000 and the rate among women at 4.9."
What's missing of course is any mention of the significant tranche of suicide deceased in GB/Ireland, who were unknown to either GP or any healthcare resource, before their death by suicide. O'Connor et al. (1999) confirmed that of 142 suicides in Greater Belfast in 1993/94, 64 (45.1%) had almost negligible contact with healthcare in the year before their death. Less than 5% had contacted their GP, or had any psychiatric history, or had been hospitalised. They were likely to have died as a result of their first suicide attempt, almost 50% were living alone at that time and over half (53.1%) were in employment. I'm not aware of any more recent published study based upon coroner's office files although Black (2021) estimated that "around 70% of people who die by suicide in Northern Ireland are not known to mental health services."
Clearly, additional psychiatric resources would be unlikely to impinge upon the fate of that significant, but unrecognised, 'at risk' constituency. Whether they could reduce suicide's attrition of recently discharged psychiatric patients is not addressed in the Guardian piece, although the Royal College of Psychiatrists does suggest therein that 'proper follow-up care [may] prevent suicides'.
My own work has convinced me of Durkheim's (1897/2002) view that suicide is a political issue - he referred to his research as a 'study in sociology' - that will not be effectively addressed other than by determined political policies, strategies and resources underpinned by a comprehensive understanding of human suicidal behaviour in all of its complexity and brutality.      
I recently joined up online with a US initiative - called iCause or PAUSE - whose mission is summarised here:
"ICAUSE (International Coalition for Addressing & Understanding Suicide Experiences) is: a global collective, grounded in compassion, social & economic justice, and health equity for all, valuing lived experiences with suicide; with the purpose of reducing the suffering associated with suicide and reducing suicide death rates through community engagement, support, education, advocacy, and research that informs clinical & non-clinical practices. ~ 2021.12.03".
Whether this outfit will grasp the nettle of reform by engaging effectively and forcefully with the dominant dual hegemony of psychiatry and psychopharmacology, remains to be seen. For sure their reference to 'social and economic justice' as a key component of suicidology seems to point in that direction.      

Looks like I've been away 'behind a mask' for over two years. During thar time I've completed a draft manuscript entitled 'Death by Suicide: Facts, myths and fallacies'. 18 chapters/sections in 373 A4 pages. Currently for 'consideration' by a London publisher - uncertain what happens next. More follows.

Some time after completion - 19+ years - my research MSc (2001) was successfully uploaded to this site in June 2020 by my friend Conlagh Finnegan. The delay was due to my problems in saving 288 A4 pages to a pdf file (eventually achieved in Jan 2018) - nowadays university dissertations are presented by students - as was my PhD dissertation - in the form both of hard copy pages AND as a pdf file on a CD.   

This study was completed as part of my educational qualification as a psychotherapist/counsellor at Ulster University, N Ireland.

The study's findings - in my humble opinion - are as valid today as in 2001. This year, the year of Covid-19 in UK/Ireland, suicide has not yet been publicly identified as a distinct category in the human catastrophe hidden under the bureaucratic term - excess deaths: that is those deaths not yet identified on death certificates as directly or indirectly related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Those innocent family members, GPs, friends, colleagues and neighbours inter alia of the suicide deceased are too often regarded by the rest of us as "collateral damage" and left to grieve alone. It remains my hope that 'the rest of us' can perhaps turn towards the bereaved - rather than away from them - and so to offer by our presence if little else, our condolences and our practical help, support and perhaps even a smidgen of empathy. 14 June 2020   

After Mass a cupla weeks ago I joined other parishioners in the Hall for tea. Some items were being sold for the Missions. I bought a wee book about diabetes for a few quid. I'm on my own since 1989 - after 19 years with my partner - so I like now & again to have a word or two in a 'safe space' with other folks. What happened shortly after I collected a cup of tea and joined two ladies at a wee table took my breath away, left me shocked and saddened, and to a degree quite angry within myself. Neither lady knew me by name nor I them. So we introduced ourselves. The inevitable 'And what do you do, Philip?' friendly enquiry was raised after the ladies briefly explained their raison d'etre that day. Since I quit college/univ teaching 5 years ago, having 'escaped' in 1998 from my major pension-building 'career', and thereafter engaged in counselling/psychotherapy/suicidology via research & private practice, I'm inclined to say: 'I'm a therapist these days'. Unsurprisingly, on that day, the ladies wondered - as is sometimes the case - what sort of therapy. In no time at all, mention of my two suicide research projects (2001 & 2010) in our local univ's school of psychology led to the disclosure by the ladies of the particular circumstances a 12 year old schoolgirl's sudden death some days earlier. Sometime later I found a brief report on page 2 of a local morning paper (Irish News 21 May 2019) headlined 'Tributes paid to schoolgirl (12)'. The news report said the poor kid had 'died suddenly over the weekend'. The above mentioned ladies knew little more than the press reporter but the scant information known or rumoured about the tragedy led us, that Sunday morning, to lament somewhat inconclusively our northern Irish 'suicide epidemic'. I'll write more about all of this soon. It's particularly galling that despite the extensive local, and massive global research bank of relevant data, research, professional insights like Joiner's much admired 'Why People Die by Suicide' (2005), and more theories about suicide than you could shake a stick at, we're still unable to do much about  the brutal cruelty implicit in human self-slaughter. I join with others in offering most sincere condolences to all this wee girl's family, friends, school chums, teachers, and neighbours regarding their incalculable loss.              

A recent 'Guardian' article by Steven Morris was head-lined "Judges lower benchmark for inquest decisions on suicide" (11 May 2019). The gist of their lordships' decision in an English/UK Appeal Court (10 May 2019) was to change the evidential standard for coroners and juries to be 'sure that someone has taken their life' from 'criminal' - i.e. beyond a reasonable doubt, to 'civil' - i.e. 'more probable than not'. Morris's article says this landmark ruling is likely to cause controversy and deep upset among those 'for whom suicide carries a deep stigma'. The case being appealed related to the death of the late James Maughan, found hanged in an Oxfordshire  prison cell. At Maughan's inquest (Morris reports), the coroner Darren Salter advised jurors that although there was 'not enough evidence to be sure he had intended to kill himself', they could conclude that on the balance of probabilities the deceased had taken his own life. Later, in the English/UK High Court, his family disputed the coroner's decision to advise a 'suicide verdict' rather than an available alternative 'open verdict'. That court ruled, Morris says, 'unexpectedly' that the standard of proof for suicide should be the balance of probabilities. The Appeal Court backed their High Court colleagues. Nearly three weeks later I've no information that the English/UK Supreme Court (or dare I say pre-Brexit European Court/s) are, or will become, involved.

A few days before this on 8 May 2019, the Guardian published a Press Association (PA) report headed "Keith Flint: not enough evidence for suicide verdict". In this case the deceased was a 'celebrity' singer found hanged, having consumed cocaine, alcohol and codeine. The senior coroner for Essex (England) Caroline Beasley-Murray recorded an open verdict. She was reported by PA to have concluded as follows: "I've considered suicide. To record that I would have had to have found that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr Flint formed the idea and took deliberate action knowing it would result in his death. Having regard to all the circumstances, I don't find there is enough evidence for that." Beasley-Murray also ruled out death by accident where Mr Flint 'may have been been larking around and it all went horribly wrong'. She further commented (PA reported): 'We will never quite know what was going on in his mind on that date and so that's why I am going to record an open conclusion'. PA reports that police found 'no suspicious circumstances', nor any third party involvement. The late Mr Flint's family did not attend the inquest and no witnesses were called to give evidence in person. I have no access to any written evidence available to the coroner. Other than postmortem evidence, no mention was made of a psychological autopsy being carried out, although such investigations are believed, rightly or wrongly, to be  standard procedure before any inquest takes place into a death where suicide is considered a possibility.

I have been pondering the meanings implicit in the word 'intention' with regard to both of the above mentioned unfortunate deaths of Mr Maughan and Mr Flint. This takes us to 'motivation' which clearly precedes 'intention'. What motivates, i.e. drives or energises an intended, i.e. planned action? In neither of the above reported fatal cases, was that key question posed, considered or answered. If either of these men were suspected of being murdered, i.e. evidence existed of third party involvement, the suspected but unknown killers' motivation would be a vital area of interest for the criminal justice process. But context is everything. Suicide is not understood to be self-murder despite the near equivalence of meaning of each term. Murders are never over for those bereaved by such a horror, even when the culprit killer/s is identified, prosecuted and incarcerated. Similarly, survivors of bereavement by suicide are 'changed, changed utterly' and crushingly, by sudden, serious, unanticipated, total loss. Yet the resources deployed in investigating suicide are minuscule, while unlimited criminal justice energy and expertise is available in relation to murder.                  

​Draft
IRELAND AND THE BIG LIE
[Blog 7 April 2018]
I was thinking about ‘the big lie’ – a ploy relied upon by politicians most recently in UK by Brexit campaigns (leave/remain) and earlier, before the US presidential election, and repeatedly since then by the execrable Trump and his duped disciples. Currently both UK and Russian governments are disputing and arguing by way of ‘the big lie’ (viz. ‘we’re right, you’re wrong’) regarding which of them, if either, is responsible for the life-threatened predicaments of the (allegedly) poisoned retired spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. [And I wish both a speedy return to ‘good health’.]( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_Skripal )
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie) to the rescue with a reliable definition:
“A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
IRELAND’S BIG LIES
The big lie has always been a dependable ally of Irish political charlatans in their lust for power over the rest of us. In Ireland, our big lie predated Hitler’s drivel by several decades. It currently proclaims: Northern Ireland’s political, social and economic problems are down to the British connection: Irish unification is the only answer. Currently one Irish political party bases its entire policy platform (“A United Ireland by any and all available means”) on that big lie. The remaining parties, or ‘gangs’ as I prefer to think of them, including those elected to Dail Eireann, i.e. the Oireachtas or legislature of the Irish Republic (Fianna Fail, Fine Gael, Labour, Solidarity-PBP, Independents 4 Change, Social Democrats, and independents) live in the complex, real world of 2018 et seq. The remaining elected representatives (you know who you are) wrap themselves in the mummifying blanket of that big lie, attached to, depending upon and viewing their world through its distorting lens.
SINN FEIN
I’ve wondered long and hard about why they cling unquestioningly to this mythical cure all for Ireland’s ills. One obvious reason is that Sinn Féin [SF] - for that’s what they call themselves: it translates, appropriately as “Ourselves”, or even “Ourselves Alone”- the political voice of a failed, and now (we’re told) dissolved, violent revolutionary gang of assassins, do not know when they are beaten. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinn_Fein) again to the rescue, tells us what we, who survived the 30 years plus of Irish slaughter by PIRA and other equally murderous ‘loyalist’ killers (1966-1998), already know only too well:
“Sinn Féin is the largest Irish republican political party, and was historically associated with the IRA, while also having been associated with the Provisional IRA (PIRA) in the party´s modern incarnation. The Irish government alleged that senior members of Sinn Féin have held posts on the IRA Army Council. However, the SF leadership has denied these claims. The US Government has made similar allegations.
“A republican document of the early 1980s stated: "Both Sinn Féin and the IRA play different but converging roles in the war of national liberation. The Irish Republican Army wages an armed campaign... Sinn Féin maintains the propaganda war and is the public and political voice of the movement".
That ‘propaganda war’, included use of a variation of the big lie, when Sinn Féin’s then national chairman Mitchell McLaughlin’s (2005) agreed with the arrogant, contradictory and nonsensical assertion, articulated on RTE, the Irish national broadcaster:
‘that the IRA was “the only legitimate government of Ireland”’.
Multiple sources accessed, including on 8 April 2018 at: https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/mitchel-mclaughlin-claimed-jean-mcconville-s-murder-was-not-a-crime-1-6517640
To conclude with a cupla vignettes, illustrated by newspaper reports, discussing how two now middle-aged former IRA volunteers, and SF members/supporters, cope with the wretched legacy of their violent revolutionary roles in ‘the war of national liberation’.
NICKY KEHOE
The above named petitioner recently engaged in widely publicised defamation litigation in Dublin, Ireland. I shall simply repeat here some of what ‘The Irish Times’ (published online 15 February 2018), an Irish newspaper of record, reported about Mr Kehoe. A former IRA volunteer, who was jailed in 1974 for possession of firearms, Kehoe received a 12 year sentence of imprisonment for attempted kidnapping in 1983 during which gunshots were exchanged with members of An Garda Siochana, the Irish police service.  
“When [it was] suggested he [Mr Kehoe] could not now pick and choose which parts of the IRA campaign of violence he supported and which were OK, Mr Kehoe replied: “I would say most or all the campaign was wrong for violence, it was wrong that people were killed”. He agreed that while he saw his activities in the historical context, the vast majority would see it as criminal. Mr Kehoe agreed that the 1,196 people killed by the IRA during that campaign never got to do things he had . . . Asked was he proud of his activities in the IRA, he said: “No. I would not be proud”. When counsel asked: “Are you ashamed?” he replied: “I would be, in a context” (“The Irish Times”, 15 Feb 2018).
 
Kehoe’s statements were unprecedented. For a currently active Sinn Fein member like Kehoe to concede that the IRA’s serial killers (1970-1998) were criminals represented a major shift in that duplicitous political gang’s attitude to the past behaviour of their paramilitary partners during “the war of national liberation”.
By contrast, a former “senior” Sinn Féin national chairman and past elected representative (Mitchell McLaughlin) refused to acknowledge that the PIRA's controversial killing of a mother of ten young children, Jean McConville, in the early 1970s, was a crime, as he claimed it had taken place in the context of political conflict (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4186887.stm). This represented Sinn Féin’s deployment of the big lie (i.e. it’s OK to kill as long as it’s for our political cause) to escape responsibility for murder. Politicians from the Irish Republic, along with the Irish media, strongly attacked McLaughlin's comments in 2005 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinn_Fein).
To my knowledge, no Sinn Féin or PIRA member, other than Kehoe, has yet publicly acknowledged their shame regarding their involvement, directly or indirectly, in PIRA’s 30 year killing spree. In the next paragraph, a second former PIRA volunteer’s self-reported behaviour and his attitude to it, is summarised. It represents the lamentable outworking of a variation of a Mitchell McLaughlin-type big lie that appears to facilitate a good night’s sleep for this flawed individual.
 
ROBERT MCCLENAGHAN
According to “The Irish News” (5 April 2018) it was reported that this gentleman, an IRA volunteer, was appointed in 2017 to the NI Victims and Survivors Forum, whose function includes helping a government agency, the NI Victims & Survivors Commission, in “understanding the needs of victims and survivors”. It is beyond irony to attempt to get your head round what McClenaghan’s expertise in this area might be. Other forum members were not informed of his PIRA past. And what did the bold Robert say 7 years ago about that? As reported in the “The Irish News” (5 April 2018):
“. . . McClenaghan said [in 2011] he was ‘immensely proud’ of having been an IRA member in the mid-70s, during which he learned to use weapons to ‘kill people’ and planted bombs ‘big and small’ in central Belfast . . . he expressed no remorse for any loss he may have inflicted on others” (“The Irish News”, 5 April 2018).
If you can endure it, you can listen to bomber McClenaghan and watch his selectively self-justifying blethers in a 36 minute Dutch film “When the war ends” (https://vimeo.com/85810659), released in 2011, that makes no reference whatsoever to the lives lost, and innocent fellow citizens injured, maimed and traumatised, directly or indirectly by his terrorist* brutality, in conjunction with his deluded mates, before he was apprehended and jailed for 12 years in 1976. He was apparently released on licence in 1988, but we have incomplete information about what he then got up to.
CONCLUSIONS
I am a pacifist. In my opinion, there is never any justification for taking the life of any human being. If you are against capital punishment, as I am, then it’s a straightforward read across to hold that human life is priceless in all circumstances. I’ll let you engage in your “what about” debate with yourself about killing fellow-humans in self-defence, in a “just war”, or by abortion.
As for the dirty, deceitful, power-lusting killing spree, admitted by and indulged in by Kehoe, McClenaghan and their deluded mates: this was and remains a salutary example of how not to problem-solve Irish political issues. The fact is that McClenaghan and his mates, and their mirror-image counterparts identifying as British loyalist/unionist in outlook, were led into murderous, criminal acts, as armed pawns in a power game planned, orchestrated and led by so-far unidentified, psychopathic manipulators – the armchair generals – from the secret safety of their anonymous backgrounds.  These cold-blooded killers were previously naïve, simple-minded, easily led but essentially ‘good human beings’, before being “radicalized” by the lies and false promises of Irish republican / British loyalist propagandists. They morphed into automaton-like puppets on a real life stage, using explosive munitions and automatic firearms to take the lives, and to destroy the livelihoods of their neighbours, other ‘good human beings’, at massive cost but zero benefit.
Over 30+ years from mid-1960’s to late 1990’s, Kehoe, McClenaghan and hundreds of their like-minded psychopathic mates, both in and out of “uniform”, sent over 3,500 fellow-citizens to the slaughter, into the ground decades before their time. For a really convincing demonstration of what Irish / British terrorist (aka political) violence delivered, be prepared to weep while having an extended look at ‘Lost Lives’ (McKitterick et al., 1999/2004). This masterly publication briefly but comprehensively describes the violent circumstances of each of these prematurely ‘lost lives’.  
Of course the most blatant ‘big lie’ that continues to be spouted day and daily by Irish republican propagandists relates to and underpins their false claim that they had no alternative but to take up arms in the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s against the British state. Anyone who wishes to take the time, will eventually acknowledge, understand and accept that during those decades, Irish terrorism was neither justified nor justifiable as a problem-solving approach to the Irish National Question. I’ll conclude with a relevant sentence or two in response to the question: was PIRA terrorism justified:
“No, I don’t believe so. There was a peaceful civil rights movement, it was operating in a country that had a democratic process.  In time the inequalities could have been addressed by peaceful protest and the political process.  The violence of the IRA only delayed that process and caused untold suffering to both communities.” ( https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Irish-Republican-Army-justified published 2 May 2014 and accessed on 15 April 2018.)  
REFERENCES
McKitterick, D., Kelters, S., Feeney, B., Thornton, C. and McVea, D. (1999/2004) Lost Lives –the stories of ther men,women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Edinburgh/Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Ltd
Oxford Dictionary (2018) Terrorism, defined as violence against civilians for political ends. Hence ‘terrorist’*: a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
Accessed online on 13 April 2018. [https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/terrorist]  
 

​SUICIDE IS NO ACCIDENT
Suicide is no accident. Think about it. The implication becomes clear: that a cause/effect relationship within the human mind links unbearable psychological pain (Shneidman, 1993) to irreversibly lethal behaviour that kills the pain but that tragically and coincidentally destroys the decision-taking mind. Hence an aeons long search goes on for a General Theory of Suicide, exemplified most recently in the work of O’Connor (2011) and Joiner (2005). I hasten to add that I am not a member of any global search squad. Rather I am interested in understanding the idiosyncratic nature of each lethal event of human self-destruction. For me, and many others, shocked and distressed by family suicide, prevention is no longer possible: we have become survivors of bereavement by suicide. And choices exist, that are inevitable, unavoidable and essential, regarding our response to what has happened. Either, we can invest scarce energy in analysis of the impossible, i.e. how I, and/or others, might have prevented our family suicide event/s, or we might consider, in some systematic and disciplined way, how to deepen our understanding about what happened, not least inter alia to secure some fraction, large or small, of absolution in relation to our catastrophic loss. Understanding suicide is, I would argue, a prerequisite for reducing the incidence of suicide, including its prevention, for example by way of the recent heavily publicised “Zero Suicide” movement: you’ll not easily change what you don’t understand.   
Some think that ‘suicide prediction skills’ are a logical way ahead for countering suicide. Some say these ‘skills’ involve an awareness of both suicide ‘risk factors’ and counter-suicide ‘protection factors’ and their balanced application in psychotherapeutic work with each suicidal client. And I am sympathetic to the apparently rational nature of this approach. However most suicidologists will not disagree that such an apparent master/servant relationship between an expert therapist and a vulnerable client, may neither fully reflect nor align well with person-centred counselling theory and practice. In what follows I discuss some helping principles for reducing an individual’s suicide impulse by facilitating the individual to understand it and thereby to take control of it. [Note that I do not intend to refer to medical psychiatry nor the DMS nor pharmaceutical pathology in what follows as I am content to possess neither relevant qualifications nor practical knowledge of these esoteric areas.]   
The CAMS approach seems to be an attempt to situate therapist and client in a relationship of equals. This may also be as close as psychotherapy can get to a self-help, life-saving approach to suicide prevention.
REFERENCES
Joiner, T. (2005)  Why people die by suicide. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ Press
O’Connor, R.C. (2011) The Integrated Motivational-Volitional Model of Suicidal Behaviour (IMV). Accessed on 18 July 2017 at http://www.suicideresearch.info/the-imv
Shneidman, E.S. (1993) Suicide as psychache. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. v181:145–147