Presuicidal Syndrome

This article is about suicide. For those at risk, there is a wide network of offers of help in which ways out are shown. In acute emergencies, the telephone counseling and the European emergency number 112 can be reached continuously and free of charge. After an initial crisis intervention , qualified referrals can be made to suitable counseling centers on request.

The term presuicidal syndrome was introduced by the psychiatrist Erwin Ringel in 1953. The syndrome comprises the three characteristics of constriction, increased aggression and flight into the fantasy world, which, according to Ringel, regularly precede a suicide act .

Beginning in the 1950s, Ringel had investigated the phase that preceded the suicide attempt on people who had survived a suicide attempt. In the majority of the 745 patients examined, he found these three characteristics:

• Narrowing : The options in life are narrowed down further and further, until ultimately only suicide remains as a possibility. This narrowing can be based solely on the thinking and behavior of the person concerned ( depression , contact disorder ), but also in reality (isolation, loneliness, unemployment, losses, illness)
• Aggression : An intensified and at the same time inhibited aggression, which sooner or later turns against the person concerned (aggression reversal).
• Escape into the fantasy world : The feeling of not being up to reality leads to an escape into unreality. The person concerned builds up an illusory world in which thoughts of death and ultimately suicide play an increasingly important role.

According to Ringel, the presuicidal syndrome is important in assessing suicidality . The occurrence of the characteristics mentioned is always a serious warning sign. As a demonstrative example of the syndrome, he cites the poem of a suicide from the 19th century. The first three lines should represent the narrowing, the middle four the isolation and the last the aggression problem and suicide fantasies:

“My thinking
becomes
more and more narrow, my view becomes more and more blind,
my terrible fate is fulfilled more and more every day .
Powerless, I drag myself through life,
deprived of all lust for life,
I have no one who
knows and believes the greatness of my misery.
But my death will prove to you
that I walked
on the edge of the grave for years and years
until it suddenly devoured me. "

- from: The Austrian soul :

literature

• Erwin Ringel : The suicide. Completion of a pathological development. Maudrich, Vienna / Düsseldorf 1953; 5th edition, unchanged reprint: Fachbuchhandlung für Psychologie, Eschborn 1988.
• Erwin Ringel (ed.): Suicide prevention. Huber, Bern 1969.
• Ada Abram, Beate Berkemeier, Karl-Josef Kluge: Suicid in adolescence. 2 volumes. Minerva publication, Munich 1980.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Erwin Ringel : The Austrian soul . 13th edition. Europa Verlag, Hamburg / Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-203-81506-0 , p. 83 .

This article is about a health issue. It is not used for self-diagnosis and does not replace a diagnosis by a doctor. Please note the information on health issues !