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Are many youths who survived an attempted suicide living happily ever after?
A peer-reviewed article offers false promises and poor clinical recommendations rooted in suicidology research that has gone bad.
In this installment, I debunk the extraordinary claims of a team of well-published academic psychologists who believe that they can predict which youth who attempt to die by suicide will go on to lead exceptionally happy and productive lives.
We need to be toughminded in interpreting research that is intended by psychologists to inform real-world, life and death decisions. We need to alert consumers if authors are giving foolish advice — and discourage other researchers from falling into the same trap.
The short answer to the question posed in my title is “No, of course not, most youths who make a serious attempt to end their lives cannot expect a dramatic boost in their well-being.” I am rejecting the authors’ claims that life for survivors of suicide is not as pessimistic as other experts and plain common sense tell us. To be persuasive, I will have to unpack some odd things the authors said in a peer-reviewed article and explain where I think they go wrong.