
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 22, 1993                   TAG: 9312220030
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                LENGTH: Medium

DOCTOR'S STUDY AIMED AT FINDING CAUSE OF SUICIDE

The controversial work of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the violent end of Houston Oiler Jeff Alm and other recent high-profile deaths have forced the disquieting subject of suicide into the public spotlight.

Dr. David Clark, the Chicago director of one of the few medical groups in the country studying why people take their own lives, said he hopes his myth-shattering research will put people like Kevorkian out of business.

"Once we understand why people contemplate suicide, we can try to head them off at the pass," said Clark, who directs the Center for Suicide Research and Prevention at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, one of only three research centers in the country dedicated to tackling the United States' eighth leading cause of death.

Chief among Clark's findings is that very few terminally ill patients ever contemplate suicide and that almost every person who does consider taking his life is suffering from a mental illness, revelations that could prove as controversial as Kevorkian's promotion of "rational suicide."

He said that if even suicidal terminally ill patients are treated for depression, almost all go on to live out their lives. Clark also is studying the perplexing rise in suicide among young people (even as suicides among the elderly decline) and links with the wide availability of guns, the No. 1 method of suicide nationwide.

In 1990, 30,906 Americans killed themselves, a little more than 1 percent of all the people who died in the United States. They included doctors, factory workers, homeless - people from every part of American society.

More than any other cause, the work of Kevorkian has brought suicide to the forefront of public discussion. On the grass-roots levels, social workers are taking an increased interest in understanding suicide while on a national level, the federal government has taken new approaches in both treatment and research.

John Ambrose, spokesman for the National Mental Health Association in Alexandria, Va., said the risk in such public discussion is planting the suggestion in vulnerable people's minds. But he said, "This is vitally important work. . . . We in the field are anxiously awaiting the results of [Clark's] research."

Clark said his research shows clearly that suicide is linked to mental problems such as depression and schizophrenia.

"We almost never see suicides in the absence of an acute mental illness," he said. He said most people treated for this type of depression, either through counseling or medication, improve in two to three weeks and may not need any help after a few months.

But he said more than half of those who commit suicide in the country never consult anyone beforehand.

by CNB