The group of influences which we shall consider as predisposing, must in the case of insane suicides be considered as the predisposing causes of the unsoundness of mind.
And, again, the causes denoted as exciting, in these pages, are also the exciting causes of the insanity in most cases. From this point of view, the fact of Suicide is only an incident occurring in Lunacy.
The various forms of insanity, and their influence in promoting suicide, their treatment, and the means of avoiding the fatal act, will be referred to, later on.
M. Casimir Broussais, in his work “Hygiène Morale,” divides the causes thus:─
A. Circumstances independent of the will.
B. Voluntary causes.
In Class A. he recounts: individual organisation, heredity, sex, age, state of health, or disease, country, climate, seasons, historical epochs.
In Class B. he places employment, education, misery, loss of fortune, gambling, disappointed love, jealousy, domestic troubles, calumny, wounded self-love, failure of ambition, remorse, religious and political fanaticism, imitation.
M. Tissot, in his treatise on our subject, proposes the following arrangement of the causes of suicide:
1. Remote negative causes, such are want of religion and want of morality.
2. Remote positive causes; either physiological, moral, or physical.
3. Proximate physical causes.
4. Proximate moral causes, either public or personal.