Suicide is one of the major causes of violent death in our societies. The fact that adolescents and the elderly are the two population groups with the highest rates of suicide challenges many assumptions of the past regarding human development. By the time they reach their teens, many adolescents lack the necessary skills to deal with stressful events in a healthy life-enhancing way. At the same time, the last stage of human development is not necessarily one in which people feel fulfilled. In this book, Ramón Martínez de Pisón expands the theory of Lazarus and Folkman (1984) for coping with stress in order to show that toxic shame is one of the most important personal and environmental constraints inhibiting one’s ability to cope with suicide and suicide-related events in a healthy way.

The Author: Ramón Martínez de Pisón is a Professor in the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University (Ottawa, Canada). He holds a Ph.D. in theology and a doctorate in psychology. He is the author of The Religion of Life: The Spirituality of Maurice Zundel (1997) and Sin and Evil (2002) among other books as well as scientific articles in the fields of Christian anthropology, religious experience, death, and the after life. Martínez de Pisón has a particular interest in the relationship between human development and the experience of God, and he brings together insights from philosophy, psychology, and theology. He is a Roman Catholic priest and a member of the religious congregation of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.