A double S: Stress and Suicide

It is a well-known fact, that stress represents one of the leading health risk factors in the 21st century. It negatively affects our quality of life and well-being, and can promote the development of a variety of illnesses. As stress is assumed to play an important role in some of the major health problems of today's day and age, including diabetes, depression, coronary heart disease and cancer, it comes as no surprise, that it can profoundly endanger one's life in a number of ways. Suicide might very well be one of them. In this chapter, we focus on the association between stress and suicidal risk. We examine stress as a bio-psycho-social phenomenon, and provide an insight into the pathways between different determinants of the experience of stress and the progressive suicidality, that potentially leads to suicide as the final outcome. Furthermore, guidelines for an effective assessment of stress and suicidality on the individual as well as public health level are presented.