June 28, 2021
9:30 am
THOUGHTS ON WHO ARE THE MOST INFLUENTIAL
SUICIDOLOGISTS
David Lester
There is a great deal of interest
these days on ranking the leading suicide researchers (as there is in other
fields). It is far from easy to make judgments about this issue.
Problems with Criteria for Greatness
The use of Google Scholar for
determining the top suicidologists is hindered by the fact that most
researchers explore topics other than suicide. For example, of my own 35 papers
published in 2020, only 22 were on the topic of suicide or related issues. To
take other examples, Thomas Joiner also studies eating disorders, while Steven
Stack studies marriage and many other topics. Therefore, the total citations,
h-index and i10-index are not accurate as measures of suicide research
productivity and influence for researchers with multiple interests.
The
titles of articles may also be misleading, with or without subtitles. Heidi Hjelmeland and Birthe Loa Knizek’s
article in Death Studies in 2021 has the title: The emperor’s new
clothes? A critical look at the interpersonal theory of suicide. The word suicide
is in the subtitle but not the title.
My most cited article (6,785 citations
as of June 25, 2021) is:
Beck, A. T., Weissman, A., Lester, D., & Trexler, L. (1974). The
measurement of pessimism: the hopelessness scale. Journal of Consulting
& Clinical Psychology, 42, 861-865.
This paper is
based on psychiatric patients who have attempted suicide, but the word suicide
does not appear in the title or subtitle.
Many researchers collaborate with
others, and some work in teams. How much credit should each author get for one
publication? Steven Stack and myself have published 16 articles and two books
together. Here is a recent contributor list from a recent article of mine
appearing in Psychiatry Research.
Conceptualization:
Isabella Berardelli
Data
collectiion: Salvatore Sarubbi, Elena Rogante, Denise Erbuto, Maria Rosaria
Cifrodelli
Formal
analysis: Salvatore Sarubbi, Marco Innamorati
Methodology:
Isabella Berardelli, Elena Rogante, Denise Erbuto
Project
administration: Maurizio Pompili, Isabella Berardelli
Supervision:
Marco Innamorati, David Lester Maurizio Pompili
Original
draft: Isabella Berardelli, Salvatore Sarubbi
Writing
- review; editing: Marco Innamorati, David Lester, Maurizio Pompili
Does
each contributor get one point for this article? In addition, in some
departments, the head of the department gets his or her name on the article
even if he or she did not contribute to it. Citation counts are also thought to be inadequate
unless one distinguishes between citations by others and citations of one’s own
works.
There are some scholars who focus on
one area of suicidology. For example, Andriessen, et al. (2015) identified the
ten most cited articles on bereavement after a suicide which were published in
(only) three core journals on suicide.
The era may be thought to play a role. Researchers who
were cited and influential in the 1950s may now no longer ever be mentioned.
Because the volume of studies of suicide has increased dramatically in recent
decades, so have citations. Perhaps the number of articles on suicide each year
should be used to weight citation amounts?
Personal
Judgments
Then, of course, we can make our own personal judgments.
I wrote reviews of the suicide literature from 1897 to 1997, trying to read
every scholarly article, chapter and book on suicide. The review was published
in four books with the title Why People Kill Themselves, covering the
periods 1897 to 1967, the 1970s, the 1980s, and 1990-1997 after which the task
became too time-consuming for me. Had I kept going, I would not have had enough
time to conduct my own research.
My choices were for greatness were:
1800s: Emile Durkheim, of course. I would also now add Sigmund Freud who
is responsible the theory of suicide as aggression directed toward the self,
what Shneidman has called murder in the 180th degree.
1950s: Andrew Henry and James Short (whose work has been relatively
ignored (except by me) but whose integrated theory (sociological plus psychological)
is quite remarkable.
1960s: Edwin Shneidman and Norman Farberow, of course, but also Charles
Neuringer for his ground-breaking work on the cognitive processes of suicidal
individuals, and Alex Pokorny for drawing attention to the role of climate and
other factors which had been neglected.
1970s: Aaron Beck and David Phillips. Phillips is rarely cited these days,
but his work on the role of the media was ground-breaking.
1980s: Antoon Leenaars for his work on suicide notes, Steven Stack for his
sociological studies, Stephen Platt for his work on unemployment, and David
Lester (myself).
It might be thought inappropriate to include myself, but
here is part of my Wikipedia entry.
His work on suicide has focused on (1) crisis intervention by
telephone, (2) preventing suicide by restricting access to the means for
suicide, (3) studies of the diaries left by suicides, (4) suicide in the
oppressed, including African American slaves, Native Americans, Holocaust victims,
the Roma, and prisoners, (5) reviews of research on and theory concerning
suicide from 1897 to 1997, and (6) innovative ideas including suicide as a
dramatic act, suicide and culture, and suicide and the creative arts.
Who would I choose for the 1990s? For the
period1990-1997, I chose no one. I did not think that any creative researcher
or theorist had appeared in those years. [1]
For the period 1998-2021, I have not kept up with the
literature, but I have written negative reviews on the state of the art in
suicidology (The End of Suicidology, Nova, 2019). From my limited
awareness of the suicidology literature (for 1897 to 1997, I was obsessive and
compulsive in my search and perusal of everything), I would choose
Thomas Joiner. There have been many critics of his theory and the domination by
his former students and by himself of research, but there was a novel feature
of the theory (the inclusion of burdensomeness), and there is no comparable recent
theory to compete with Joiner’s.
I would also choose Cas Soper whose writings are not well
known, but he has thrown down the gauntlet in his arguments against traditional
theory and research and argued for an evolutionary theory of suicide. In
addition, Jie Zhang has proposed a new theory of suicide and conducted some
major research studies in China.
Two of my close colleagues (John Gunn and Steven Stack)
also nominated Angus Deaton, Edward Klonsky, Matthew Nock, Rory O’Connor, and Ian
Rockett.
I may have missed an important figure or two, and each of
you may choose different researchers and theorists. (You would be wrong, of
course!)
Published
Lists
Expertscape
Expertscape (www.expertscape.com/ex/suicide ) based their
rankings for 22,043 articles published since 2008 and compiled as of February
3, 2019. However, Expertscape searches only medical journals (PubMed) and so
misses psychological and social sciences research. It is therefore, biased.
Omitted
27,568 lower-scoring
Apparently this list was based on simply the number of
articles published with suicide in the title. One assumes that they searched
for titles with suicid*. However, this list does not discriminate between
articles and editorials/comments. Several of those on the list carry out very
little research but, rather, publish brief comments on suicide (and other
topics).
Vogelzang, et al. 2011
Vogelzang, et al. (2011) search the Web of Science for
articles on suicide PLUS depression, which obviously limits the range of
articles on suicide, for the period 1900-2007. The top 15 researchers in order
of number of publications were:
JJ Mann
MA Oquendo
Y Conwell
J Lönnqvist
A Apter
DA Brent
CF Reynolds
HY Meltzer
HS Akiskal
K Hawton
RJ Baldessarini
A Roy
J Angst
V Arango
Clearly, this does not tap leading suicidologists. Only
some of those on this list contribute meaningfully to suicidology.
Ionnadis
The lists provided by Ioannadis (2016) do not focus on
suicide, but rather on all papers published by scholars. It is not easy, therefore,
to identify the suicidologists, and it is impossible to identify the scores for
only suicide research. Ionnadis ranks the top 2% of scholars in the world and
his c scores for the top ten on the Expertscape list are shown below:
Keith Hawton leads, with
Thomas Joiner second.
Web of Science
The Web of Science publishes the top 100 suicidologists
based solely on the number of articles on the topic. The top 10 are shown
below. I do wonder who anonymous is and how he or she is so prolific! The Web of Science appears to do the best job of capturing articles on suicide in all disciplines.
D Lester 1163
Anonymous 659
JJ Mann 470
K Hawton 370
M Pompili 314
G. Turecki 296
TE Joiner 295
D Gunnell 293
MA Oquendo 280
N Kapur 234
D De Leo 227
Comment
Of course, it would appear to be objective if greatness
could be quantified, but the numbers generated will always be criticized on
some grounds. For myself, I prefer the subjective method, that is, my own
evaluation of the contributions made by suicidologists!
References
Andriessen,
K., Krysinska, K., & Stack, S. (2015). Predictors of article impact in
suicidology. Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior, 45, 18-24.
Ioannadis,
J. P. N., Klavans, R., & Boyack, K. W. (2016). Multiple citation indicators
and their composite across scientific disciplines. PLOS Biology, 14(7): e1002501
Lester,
D. (1972, 1983, 1992, 2000). Why people kill themselves. Springfield,
IL: Charles Thomas.
Lester,
D. (2019). The end of suicidology. Hauppauge, NY: Nova.
Vogelzang,
B.H., Scutaru, C., Mache, S., Vitzthum, K., Quarcoo, D., & Groneberg, D. A.
(2011). Depression and suicide publication analysis, using density equalizing
mapping and output benchmarking. Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine,
33(1), 59-65.
[1] For my proposals for
these eras, I am not sure that, today, in 2021, I would include all of those
listed above.
2 comments:
Hello Dr. Lester,
I'm so happy to have found a way to contact you. I've found out about you recently while reading a book called in portuguese "Pense Como Um Freak" from the author Stephen Dubner. I would like to tell you how glad I am for knowing about your research! I read on the book that you checked also the spiritual matter to know about the reason why people commit suicide. I am curious though about your source on that matter. I'm also doing research, if I can be bold enough to tell you a reason... Maybe you already thought about it... or read about it... the main reason... I would say one word for you to dig which is Materialism. I know that may sound absurd, considering that religious people also commit suicide. But think about it. Religious people can be materialists without being quite aware of it. They think dying will end their suffering and that's how they can be remembered once they think they will end up their existence. But of course... there are other reasons... not only one. Some poeple commit suicide, like mothers for instance... after one of their children die. They think they will meet them in heaven. But that's less evident. When you say people don't have someone to blame for their sufferings... I think you are quite right... but they actually don't know why they are suffering so you're just checking the effect and not the cause. The cause is Materialism. They spent their whole life in a selfish way... thinking about their own problems instead to think about being useful. Materialism turns people into objects and objects are easy to become disposable. That's why the answer is suicide. Because you're putting an end to your life and making people remember you for at least a long time before everyone stops talking about you. If you need literature on that, I'll send it to you. WHo knows that really is the answer?
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