The Suicidal Patient—An inside View

This investigation proposes a research tactic, “experiential research,” as a useful supplement in culture and personality studies. The article focuses on the senior author's experience as a researcher/patient in a psychiatric hospital. His two-week stay as a depressed, suicidal patient provides insight into the effects of socio-cultural system pressures on personality functioning and identity reformation. The pervasive communications that patients are powerless and of little worth appears to provoke individual disturbances and group efforts to sustain self-esteem, exchange information, goods and services, and to undermine the imposed system. Journal accounts of the first and fourth days of hospitalization describe the experiences of admission and a near suicide attempt.