Current Research

According to the World Health Organization, suicide claims one life every 45 seconds. Given the wide-reaching personal and societal costs of suicide, identifying the contributing factors is critical.
 
Dr. Simon Sherry, an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Dalhousie University, recently collaborated with colleagues from the University of Western Ontario and the University of British Columbia on a study which focused on the strong connection between perfectionism and suicide. They discovered that the adaptive (or what could be considered “good”) aspects of perfectionism, such as striving to meet unrealistic goals, increase the risk of suicidal behaviours.
 
The work done by this group of researchers is considered to be some of the most rigorous and comprehensive to date, and included summarizing 45 studies on perfectionism and suicide. The full findings will soon be published in the Journal of Personality.  

Dr. Sherry, who is also a Clinical Psychologist, is available to comment on this study, and discuss why the link between perfectionism and suicide is often underappreciated, under recognized and misunderstood.