Decision Making Patterns

These results suggest that, when weighing the pros and cons of acting now versus acting later, individuals who have thought about suicide and made low-lethality suicide attempts in the past are less likely to wait for a bigger reward; they prefer the smaller reward available now. Individuals who had never attempted suicide and individuals who had made nearly lethal suicide attempts in the past, by contrast, were more likely to wait for the bigger reward. 

I want to emphasize this latter finding: the decision-making process of someone who almost died as a result of their suicide attempt was no different from the decision-making process of someone who had never attempted suicide, was not currently suicidal, and did not have a mental illness. This is an especially important finding because it shows us that some who engage in suicidal behaviors have a decision-making style that is no different from those who do not have a mental illness and have never tried to kill themselves.

When we consider the results of Jollant’s research in combination with Dombrovski’s research, they together suggest that people who use more violent methods to attempt suicide have a preference for big rewards.

Why don’t individuals who have made a suicide attempt use strategies that they know will work better? Well, one possible reason is that we sometimes pay more attention to the times when a strategy did not work, even though these instances are rare and uncommon. If we place too much weight on the times that a strategy did not work, we are more likely to stop using strategies that work most of the time.