From Tom Verberne
Robert Pool reports a “grand theory” of suicide (28 February, p 37), but his article rather misses the mark. A theory without any reference to what is known about the biology and the epidemiology of suicide is more grandiloquent than grand. Ilkka Henrik Mäkinen’s 1997 statement still stands: “Neither the individual-level causes nor the general-level correlates of suicide have been clarified to a satisfactory extent” (Social Science and Medicine, vol 44, p 1919).
Rosanna, Victoria, Australia
