16,648 reasons to live instead of dying by suicide: insights from a computer-assisted content analysis
5 affiliations
- 1Department of Linguistics and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20814 USA
- 2Rebecca Resnik and Associates, North Bethesda, MD 20852 USA
- 3Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37232 USA
- 4TBD Solutions, Grand Rapids, MI 49546 USA
- 5School of Social Work, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60660 USA
Abstract
Most research on suicide focuses on the progression toward lethal action. Fewer studies have looked at individuals’ past experiences with the desire to die and why they did not die by suicide. Moreover, the existing use of reasons to live in assessment and treatment is generally grounded in inventories of questions that, while groundbreaking and well validated, were developed decades ago and without a focus on individuals’ lived experiences. In this study, an online user’s query to formerly suicidal people on the popular Reddit platform afforded a novel opportunity to investigate reasons people lived in a large, naturally occurring sample of 16,648 self-reports about their experiences. Using a new method for computer-assisted qualitative content analysis, we identify categories, and themes organizing those categories, that affirm prior work and also provide new perspectives on that work, as well as suggesting connections between ideas in the literatures on reasons people die, reasons people live, and subjective and psychological well-being. The study highlights the value of computer-assisted methods as a way of achieving both scale and interpretable results, and it identifies a number of theoretical and clinical avenues for further investigation.
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BibTeX
@article{resnik202616648,
title = {{16,648 reasons to live instead of dying by suicide: insights from a computer-assisted content analysis}},
author = {Philip Resnik and Rebecca Resnik and Katherine M. Schafer and Josh Hagedorn and Jonathan B. Singer},
journal = {Scientific Reports},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.1038/s41598-026-58537-4},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-58537-4},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - 16,648 reasons to live instead of dying by suicide: insights from a computer-assisted content analysis
AU - Philip Resnik
AU - Rebecca Resnik
AU - Katherine M. Schafer
AU - Josh Hagedorn
AU - Jonathan B. Singer
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/07
JO - Scientific Reports
DO - 10.1038/s41598-026-58537-4
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-58537-4
AB - Most research on suicide focuses on the progression toward lethal action. Fewer studies have looked at individuals’ past experiences with the desire to die and why they did not die by suicide. Moreover, the existing use of reasons to live in assessment and treatment is generally grounded in inventories of questions that, while groundbreaking and well validated, were developed decades ago and without a focus on individuals’ lived experiences. In this study, an online user’s query to formerly suicidal people on the popular Reddit platform afforded a novel opportunity to investigate reasons people lived in a large, naturally occurring sample of 16,648 self-reports about their experiences. Using a new method for computer-assisted qualitative content analysis, we identify categories, and themes organizing those categories, that affirm prior work and also provide new perspectives on that work, as well as suggesting connections between ideas in the literatures on reasons people die, reasons people live, and subjective and psychological well-being. The study highlights the value of computer-assisted methods as a way of achieving both scale and interpretable results, and it identifies a number of theoretical and clinical avenues for further investigation.
SN - 2045-2322
ER -