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New York Times: Those methods that require forethought or exertion on the actor’s part (taking an overdose of pills, say, or cutting your wrists), and thus most strongly suggest premeditation, happen to be the methods with the least chance of “success.”

Do many people who attempt to end their life and leave their loved ones behind via cutting their wrists stay alive as the New York Times article suggests?

(If you are thinking about committing suicide, you are not alone. Get help. Here are some people you can contact.)

Christian
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Muz
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  • Good question. The Wikipedia article doesn't provide a reference for that sentence, other than to establish the outcomes of traumatic shock. –  Aug 25 '13 at 16:23
  • Only the question "does wrist cutting work" is on-topic. The other: "how badly..." is not on topic, but would be on-topic at biology.SE. –  Aug 25 '13 at 16:24
  • Ok, edited it out :) I think it would still be part of a decent answer, because there's some difference between someone who just slashes it once and someone who really 'digs in'. – Muz Aug 25 '13 at 16:34
  • cutting off the hands and then cauterising or otherwise treating the wounds to stop blood loss is quite different from puncturing arteries and letting blood deliberately flow. The one does not mean the other isn't possible. Bad question. – jwenting Aug 25 '13 at 16:36
  • @jwenting How is it a bad question? Wikipedia lists without reference that wrist cutting as a method of suicide, and outlines its mechanism of death. This question asks "is that true"? That's exactly the type of question this site is meant to answer. –  Aug 25 '13 at 16:40
  • @Sancho Because it's too broad. Pretty much anything can be fatal in the right circumstances or due to lack of treatment. Plus this is pretty much a yes/no question without more details or context. – rjzii Aug 25 '13 at 16:59
  • @rob Easy questions aren't bad questions, they're just uninteresting. It's not too broad. It's very specific: Is wrist cutting fatal? A good answer will explain that it is fatal, and to what extent it is fatal, and under what circumstances. It won't take more than a few paragraphs to sort this out. –  Aug 25 '13 at 17:02
  • @jwenting *cutting off the hands and then cauterising or otherwise treating the wounds to stop blood loss is quite different from puncturing arteries and letting blood deliberately flow. The one does not mean the other isn't possible.* All that is true, but so what? It doesn't make "is wrist cutting fatal" a bad question. –  Aug 25 '13 at 17:50
  • @Sancho I have a different reason for disliking and not answering this question: if I asked whether it's possible to make an improvised explosive device, would a good answer tell me how to do it? People avoid answering questions about [cracking](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(computer_security)#Black_hat) and writing [viruses](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus) on Stack Overflow. – ChrisW Aug 25 '13 at 18:51
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    @ChrisW I think a question like "Source [X] claims that it is possible to make an IED. Is that true?" would be answerable by simply linking to many reliable sources establishing that people have made IEDs. The answer to this question needs a bit more detail because establishing that there exists at least one person who's committed suicide by cutting their wrists doesn't fully answer the question "is wrist cutting fatal". –  Aug 25 '13 at 19:02
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    @Sancho One could make an IED question more detailed: is it possible to do `Foo` successfully by following this `Bar` recipe which I found at `Baz`? I would simply not publish any information on a topic such as this, noting that SE ranks highly on Google searches. Although any answer to it may be true, and on-topic according the site rules/format, either the answer wouldn't useful, or I wouldn't want it to be useful/used: because, "Speak only words that do no harm." Anyway, that is how I feel about this question. – ChrisW Aug 25 '13 at 19:15
  • @ChrisW I think the question "*is it possible to do Foo successfully by following this Bar recipe which I found at Baz?*" would likely be unanswerable due to lack of a reliable source confirming or refuting the usefulness of the proposed recipe. –  Aug 25 '13 at 19:27
  • @ChrisW I think I've stayed fairly to-the-point and factual in my answer, citing reliable sources that are mostly peer-reviewed. –  Aug 25 '13 at 19:31
  • @Sancho Muz is clearly of the idea that just because people don't die when their hands are cut off with medical aftercare, slitting your wrists can't be fatal. Thus, a bad question. – jwenting Aug 26 '13 at 05:07
  • @jwenting no he's not. He's asking if it works, and he acknowledges in a comment that there's a difference between different types of wrist cutting. –  Aug 26 '13 at 06:00
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    i swear you guys are reading too much into this – Muz Aug 26 '13 at 11:15
  • [Down, not across](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sysadmin-recovery/). See also [alt.suicide.holiday Methods](http://www.depressed.net/suicide/suicidefaq/other.html). – Martin Schröder Aug 30 '13 at 22:14
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    I haven't downvoted this question yet because I can't think of a good rationale for doing so, but [I don't like it](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:I_just_don%27t_like_it). – Andrew Grimm Aug 30 '14 at 03:28

1 Answers1

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Some people have died by cutting their wrist or forearm.

When suicide victims choose this method [suicidal incision], they use an easily accessible area and clearly prefer the wrist or the antecubital fossa. (Riviello, 2009. p. 18)

Wrist cutting is rarely lethal.

It is nearly impossible to kill oneself by sanguination secondary to lacerated wrists. The arteries lie deep, protected by muscle, bone, and tendon. in order to get the razor blade deep enough to sever the artery, the suicide must cut through skin, tendons, and muscle. [...] As he becomes unconscious, there is always the chance the blood will coagulate and the bleeding cease before death. (Williams, 2009. p. 40)

It has long been established that overdoses of medication and wrist cutting are low lethality methods. (Rhyne et al. 2010)

This has also been studied in jails, and it is relatively non-lethal, but it can lead to death.

The mortality rates of inmates' attempts by hanging (52 deaths in 602 attempts) was 19 times greater than inmates who cut themselves (1 death in 275 attempts). (McKEE 1988)

Suicidal intent

Most wrist cutting is not done with the intent of killing oneself.

Interviews with 139 suicidal patients indicate a tendency for suicide attempters using wrist cutting to score low on the Suicidal Intent Scale. (Nielsen et al. 1993)

References

GEOFFREY R. McKEE (1998) LETHAL VS NONLETHAL SUICIDE ATTEMPTS IN JAIL. Psychological Reports: Volume 82, Issue , pp. 611-614. doi: 10.2466/pr0.1998.82.2.611

Ralph Riviello. Manual of Forensic Emergency Medicine. Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2009

Reuel Williams. The Art of Suicide. AuthorHouse, 2009

Clinton Ernest Rhyne PhD, Donald I. Templer PhD*, Lillian G. Brown PhD, Noel B. Peters PhD. Dimensions of Suicide: Perceptions of Lethality, Time, and Agony. 30 DEC 2010. DOI: 10.1111/j.1943-278X.1995.tb00959.x

Nielsen, Anette S.; Stenager, Elsebeth; Brahe, Unni B. Attempted suicide, suicidal intent, and alcohol. Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, Vol 14(1), 1993, 32-38.

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    Does this consider both lateral and longitudinal cutting? My understanding was that a cut down the arm, along a vein, is highly fatal, while a cross cut (the one usually referred to as "cutting your wrist") is rarely. – Bobson Sep 03 '14 at 17:45
  • I'm also told that sleeping tablets have an ingredient that would make you throw up in high doses, calibrated to have no effect on normal use but removing a lethal dose of tablets from your body. If someone could confirm... – gnasher729 Jan 11 '22 at 10:28