Why I don't commit suicide

Résumé

This article, which Watson wrote after the Great Depression of 1929 and was rejected by several magazines, now comes to light for the first time after being kept for nearly a century in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The founder of behaviorism speculates about the causes of suicide before presenting the results of a survey with a sample of over 100 subjects about the reasons why they keep living despite the difficulties they encountered in life. In his opinion, the ultimate reason for the rising tide of suicides seems to lie in the crisis of values affecting modern society. Social institutions as university, business, politics, family, church or marriage, are not offering young people enough values to make life interesting for them. After this introduction, Watson shows the responses of the subjects, most of which are conventional and negative, and ends the article by proposing drastic changes in the social environment and giving two rules for those people who are suicidal. The first and most important is not to make any decisions when they are depressed, and the second is to run away for a time, looking for a new environment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved) ARGUMENT FACTEUR-PROTECTION RÉSILIENCE