A comprehensive social‑science treatise examining self‑inflicted death from multiple angles: historical and literary examples, legal responses including criminality, insurance, and wills, statistical rates and demographic patterns, and causes spanning mental illness, physical disease, addiction, social conditions, religion, occupation, and imitation. It surveys means and seasonality, urban versus rural differences, age and sex distributions, military and prison contexts, and colonial settings, and includes case material from coroner investigations. The final sections address prevention, treatment, and policy recommendations, and the work concludes with bibliographical and statistical appendices.