DILEMMAS IN THE ATTITUDE TOWARDS SUICIDE.

Although apparently easy to define, the suicidal act or attempt raises complex and difficult problems due to the multitude of conditions and situations that can lead to it. In all cases the suicide's definition has always centred on the intention of one person to deliberately cause his or her death in an active manner. Defining suicide has been consecutively the temptation of philosophers, sociologists, theologians, psychologists and psychiatrists. From an epistemological point of view the suicide is an open concept without precise borders, yet not incoherent. Scientists have constantly tried to establish evaluation criteria of suicidal acts but these are variable. One can even assume that there is an infinity of combinations of characteristics that would legit- imize the label of suicide, although none of them can be particularized in any way. Not even death itself represents a necessary condition for the evaluation of an act as suicide.