Suicide Movies

"As an original and comprehensive analysis ..., this book serves as a marvelous resource for those working with suicide prevention, cultural researches or anyone who loves film. ... Suicide is an incredibly complex subject, and the insights provided by this careful work are definitely welcome." Julio Xerfan, Institute of Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in International Journal of Social Psychiatry, Vol. 59, 2013 "The authors clearly have a passion and interest for both cinema and the social factors associated with suicide. [...] For the suicide researcher or for those with a passion for film, the book is a very nice, and remarkably thorough, resource." Timothy W. Lineberry, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 1/2012 "This book sheds light on the complexity of suicidal behavior, and although the study covers decades of film, the analysis is fine-grained using the best research approaches. The researchers are sensitive to how film distorts rather than mirrors the phenomenon. They successfully pull off a massive undertaking: the detailed analysis of 1,273 movies containing over 1,500 suicides, spanning the entire 20th century and into the 21st." Thomas Joiner, PhD, Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL Editor of Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior "As Steven Stack and Barbara Bowman note, almost all of us love movies, and this book provides a fascinating analysis of the way in which movies have depicted suicide over the last 100 years. Who knew that there were over one thousand movies that portrayed suicides? But not only does this book intrigue us with the stories (and I loved the frames from the movies), but Stack and Bowman show that this topic has important social implications. Does society shape the way in which suicide is portrayed in the movies or do the movies shape our attitudes toward suicide, our lay theories of suicide, and even our own suicidal behavior? It is rare that a scholarly book is a "page-turner," but I loved reading Stack and Bowman's thoughts on the suicides in movies that I had seen. This book is a "must buy" for movie buffs and scholars." David Lester, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Pomona, NJ;