Suicide and the conflicted soldier: a view from psychodiagnomics.

BACKGROUND

To move beyond the traditional, cross-sectional, ontogenetic, biopsychosocial, diagnostic formulation of suicide.

METHOD

Analysis of media reports, principally via Highbeam Research, of a noted case of a sudden and unexpected military suicide: Jacob Kovco.

RESULTS

Ontogenetic diagnostic analysis, centering on the person, was successfully amplified by diagnostic analysis of time and place, in the cultural and historical, phylogenetic domain. It revealed an occult, dissociative depression. This method is called psychodiagnomics.

CONCLUSION

Ontogenetic analysis of suicide, especially biomedical analysis must be complemented by ontogenetic and phylogenetic analysis in the socio-cultural domains.