The Glendon Association

Firestone, R.W., & Seiden, R.H. (1987). Microsuicide and suicidal threats of everyday life. Psychotherapy. 24(1), 31-39.

Microsuicide encompasses behaviors, communications, attitudes, or lifestyles that are self-induced and threatening or inimical to an individual’s physical health, emotional well-being, or personal goals. Examples of microsuicidal behavior include progressive self-denial, inwardness, withholding, destructive fantasy bonds, and physically harmful lifestyles. These behaviors and related negative thought processes that mediate self-destructive behavior are analyzed in terms of their function as a defense first against separation anxiety and later against death anxiety. Rather than considering suicide, suicidal ideation, and more serious forms of microsuicidal behavior as subclasses of mental illness, the authors conceptualize mental illness as a form of suicide.