Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide Paperback – October 10, 2000

Undeniably, the unique strength of this book comes from the author's intimacy while dealing with the topic. It is one thing to be an outsider observing a phenomenon and someone who has both experienced it, observed it and studied it for a good deal of their lives. This book is authoritative, detailed and incredibly comprehensive. If you ever had to read a book on this topic, it would be this - there is a seldom an aspect of suicide Jamison doesn't touch upon - history, culture, psychology, neurobiology, personal accounts. Furthermore, her courage to write about a topic that involves interviewing people about the most private and devastating moments of their lives is commendable. This is excluding the resilience one needs to devote a career to studying manic-depressive illness - a primary cause of suicide - and continuously witnessing such events and again and again, not to mention escaping its clutches herself in her own earlier life.What is intriguing about suicide is how it's peculiar to humans - for example, how it can be a product of the human ability to self-reflect and ruminate. From the evolutionary perspective, it is strange that this disposition towards ending one's own life (i.e. depression) has remained in the gene pool. Redfield talks about the possible altruistic notions of suicide - in the Eskimos, Norse, Samoan and Crow Indians, it is acceptable as an act of self-sacrifice among elderly and the sick. In Nomadic tribes, anyone slowing you down reduces your chance of survival. But if you move from the hereditary to the genetic - it turns out that the question of genes is a significantly difficult one. Are there specific genes for suicide, a result of genetically passed dispositions (including addiction, aggression and so forth), or disposition towards mental illnesses that cause suicide? Maybe, it's a more of a random product of DNA arrangement. As usual, the hereditary questions are relatively easier to answer than those regarding the genetic mechanisms that govern them.That isn't the only problem with the science of suicide - the statistics and surveys are hard to capture information from, and analyze them properly. Suicide continues to be underreported, although there has been tremendous progress in decreasing this. When it comes to clinical drug trials, suicidal patients are almost always excluded so it's hard to make compelling studies between suicidal behavior and antidepressants.The book talks a lot about mental illnesses such as depression, manic-depression and schizophrenia, but makes sure not to delve into them so its feels like a repetition of a course in abnormal psychology - it sticks to its own domain of suicide, regardless of the degree of overlap between psychopathology and suicide. It talks about many things that you can find in standard suicide text and manuals: risk factors, methods of suicide. This description is slight unfair...this book doesn't read like a manual, scientific and cultural commentary chapters are alternated with very intimate accounts: there are tragic mentions of suicide notes, but the book isn't about sympathy, there is an entire chapter on how effective suicide notes are effective in determining suicidal intentions, recreating the completer's psychological state of mind before suicide.The book is a must read for anyone, probably because nearly anyone who is uninformed about suicide is bound to have views based on false notions or misinformation surround the topic: People are shocked at successful people committing suicide ("Why did they kill themselves if they had it good?" without knowing that manic-depression targets the successful and academically high achieving more than the normal population. It mainly strikes in college years, and for reasons such as this that college's need well managed mental health infrastructure almost as much as other facilities such as athletic buildings and libraries. After reading this book, you'll feel antsy about WHY there isn't more aggressive drive towards improving suicide awareness, especially due to its prevalent in school years.The last chapter of the book is incredibly important as I feel that it had something that was missing from other books about suicide. Whereas most books place emphasis the individual, Jamison talks about societal views and especially recommending media and journalistic ethics - something important in our (unfortunately) hyper-reporting-dependent society: not presenting simplistic explanations for suicide, repetitive reporting, "how-to" descriptions of suicide, glorification of suicide and perhaps the most counter-intuitive idea - that we should NOT focus on completer's positive characteristics too much ("he/she had a bright future") because it may make suicide attractive to people at risk who aren't as well performing.Books such as these are terribly important because they can act as tools to slowly chip away at the stigma associated with suicide, especially those in religious communities. In Abrahamic religions that take up most of the world's population, there are no burial rights for suicides. Lastly, I shouldn't forget to mention that for a lawmaker, her policy recommendations give an imperative insight into what a society should be doing to tackle a phenomenon like suicide.I loved reading this book and didn't find it even boring in the slightest although I had nothing to benefit from it personally, professionally or academically. It's interesting simply due to its power to make someone into an informed citizen simply by capturing his or her curiosity. There isn't anything to complain about in this book - except that I hope that she discussed the philosophy of suicide more before considering there is endless debate on the bravery vs. cowardice and undesirability of this option. (Camus said "There is only one serious philosophical question, and that is suicide".)A brilliant, personal, well-written and studied book!

I lost my brilliant 23 year old daughter who had just started her 3rd year of medical school to suicide 4-11-13. At first, I read as many books as I could written by people who have lost children to suicide and what they went through and how they survived. Once you are able to read, these books are very helpful in making you realize all the horrible things you are thinking, going through, and experiencing, while the most horrible experience of your existence is in fact, a normal reaction to losing your child. Normal. Nothing about losing your child to suicide is normal. But at least you know you are not alone.My daughter, never in her 23 years, showed one single sign to me or any of her friends of depression. I found out after her death, that she had confided in one friend that she was depressed very soon before she died, but that person thought we knew and did not know she was suicidal. Other than that, her life was filled with success that came very easily to her. She was brilliant, sweet, loving, an artist, a writer, and succeeded at everything she set out to do. She never seemed depressed or stressed out. She was doing extremely well in medical school. I saw her the week before she died and she seemed totally normal, her sweet, happy, normal self. One week later I was called at work by the police that lived over 3 hours away where she lived and went to medical school that she was dead from suicide. Only in her suicide note did I find out that she had been depressed all her life and hid it from us to protect us from it. She said she would have took her life years ago but could not bear to do it due to the pain it would cause us, but to forgive her that she could no longer go on due to the weight of the sadness she has lived all her life. This seemingly happy child from the day she was born, sad?? I won't go in to the depths of my pain since and what it is now and will forever be. But I needed answers. This book provides answers in part, because it has in it the many instances of brilliant people taking their own lives.I do want to let you know that this book is excellent. It is written by someone who suffers from bipolar disorder, has attempted suicide herself, but has continued on to lead a very productive life and is a psychologist. She has her own personal experience in this book as well as experiences of others. However, I would not suggest this book to anyone who has very recently lost someone to suicide. Your mind would not be able to grasp this book then. What you need then is something to help you through your pain as best you can. Though I still need this, I needed something to help me understand the mood disorders such as depression and bipolar. I don't know which one my daughter had, probably major depression. But I will never know because she never sought help.Also, there is a lot of scientific information in this book such as the biology of a suicidal mind, history of depression in the past and how society dealt with it. This may be too much scientific information for some people it just depends on the person. For me, it helped knowing this.The book is also filled with just so much that helped me and much of it is just too hard to put into words in this review.I recommend this book highly for someone who wants to try to understand suicide (what we know so far anyway, we have much more to learn), but wait a bit after your loss.No book you read will relieve the agony that one experiences after the loss of a loved one after suicide, especially if it's your child. But some books help you better understand things and that's about as much as any book can do with this horrible epidemic.

This book is rather redundant than I had hoped, after having read a couple of Dr Jamison's books. If you haven't read any of the others, I believe you will find it to be informative, well written and an opportunity to broaden one's personal growth. Would still recommend.