Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to David Lester.
American university students owned more than twice as many credit cards as British university students. However, scores on a credit card attitude scale predicted the number of cards owned by respondents in both countries.
Data from a sample of 500 undergraduate students showed that depression scores were more strongly correlated with suicide risk than were mania scores, uggesting that such traits should be routinely screened to evaluate suicide risk.
A digital access index was associated with measures of national character (such as extraversion and individualism) for 18 industrialized nations, but statistical controls for gross domestic product per capita eliminated these associations.
Samples of Kuwaiti (N=460) and American (N=273) undergraduates responded to six personality questionnaires to assess optimism, pessimism, suicidal ideation, ego-grasping, death anxiety, general anxiety, and obssessive-compulsiveness. Each participant was assigned to the astrological sign associated with date of birth. One-way analyses of variance yielded nonsignificant F ratios for all the seven scales in both Kuwaiti and American samples, except for anxiety scores among Americans. It was concluded that there was little support for an association between astrological sun signs and scores on the present personality scales.
In a sample of 112 Kuwaiti college students, approval of physician-assisted suicide was not significantly correlated with scores on trait anxiety, death depression, or death obsession.
Buying and selling items on eBay was predicted in a sample of 386 undergraduate students from two institutions by computer or Internet skills, year and, for buying items on eBay, sex.
The Kuwait University Anxiety Scale was administered to 138 American college students and three meaningful factors identified, somewhat different from those identified by Abdel-Khalek in 2000.
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A study of 98 lone, rampage killers in the United States from 1949 to 1999 found that those who were killed by police officers killed and wounded more victims than those who completed suicide who, in turn, killed or wounded more victims than those who were captured. Those rampage killers who completed suicide were less likely to be judged schizophrenic and more likely to be killing present or former co-workers.
E. Durkheim (1897) suggested that the societal rate of suicide might be explained by societal factors, such as marriage, divorce, and birth rates. The current study examined male prison suicide rates and suicide rates for men in the total population in the United States and found that variables based on Durkheim's theory of suicide explained prison suicide rates better than suicide rates for total population. Possible reasons for these findings are discussed.
Although official data have reported an average number of suicides in the veterans of the Vietnam War, the veterans themselves estimate that the death toll from suicide may be 8 to 10 times the official toll. Attention is drawn to a website honoring those veterans of the war who have committed suicide: www.suicidewall.com
This Commentary suggests that it is possible, from an economic perspective, that any individual artist/celebrity suicide may be of net benefit to society. Sales of the artist's products and associated merchandise may increase after the suicide, and people, including those who were not even born at the time of the suicide, may derive value from its iconic rectification, not to mention the higher value they derive from some private goods. A case study of Kurt Cobain is given to illustrate this phenomenon.
This Commentary explores the impact of the Cultural Revolution instigated by Mao Zedong in Communist China from the year of 1966 to 1976 on suicidal behavior. Cases of individuals who completed suicide are presented, together with examples of the suicide notes they left. The lack of protest suicide is noted.
This article reviews simple epidemiological data on completed suicide rates in different nations of the world, the results of time-series studies of suicide in nations, and the results of regional correlates of suicide rates within nations. It is argued that it is important to conduct comparable sociological studies in samples of nations so that the general trends and deviations from these trends can be observed and efforts made to explain these phenomena.
Theory and research on suicide were used to derive variables for a regression equation to predict the suicide rate in 17 industrialized nations. This regression equation was found to be quite accurate in predicting the relative suicide rates of other European nations (not in the original sample) but not of non-European nations. Blood type was the strongest predictor of national suicide rates.
The Sunshine Skyway Bridge in St. Petersburg, Florida, has crisis emergency telephones and a police presence. Although the number of suicides from the bridge has declined, it is too soon to test the statistical significance of the decline.
In a sample of 18 industrialized nations with available data, mean scores on the "big five factors" were not significantly associated with national suicide or homicide rates.
In a sample of 139 community residents, credit card ownership was associated with age, sex, income, attitudes toward credit cards and toward money, and scores on a verbal measure of prefrontal cortical dysfunction, supporting a neuroeconomic approach to economic decision-making.