Suicide, like so much else in psychiatry, tends to run in families. For example, Margaux Hemingway recently committed suicide. This attracted media attention, not only because she was the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, himself a suicide victim. Suicide was no stranger to the Hemingway family. Ernest’s brother, sister, and father all committed suicide. Thus, there have been five suicides in the Hemingway family over four generations. Family histories, like the Hemingway’s, lead us to question if suicide is caused by some genetic component. This curiosity has led many to explore the possibilities behind suicide. The have explored through clinical, twin, and adoption studies and finally from molecular genetic studies.
I think the strongest strategy is the adoption because it minimizes the possible effect of some family factors. This is because the individual is separated at birth, or shortly afterwards, and share their genes but in different environments from their biological relatives. A health register of causes of death revealed that 57 of the 5,483 adopted between 1924 and 1947 eventually committed suicide. They were matched with adopted controls. The cause of death register revealed that 12 of the 269 biological relatives of the 57 adopted suicides had they committed suicide compared with only 2 of the 269 adoptive parents of the 57 who committed suicide
ugh clinical studies of family histories, suicide has been noted to run in the family. Among psychiatric patients a
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