English poet Thomas Chatterton dead at age 17 from suicide by arsenic poisoningEach poet had their own personal reasons to commit suicide, but researches compared the works of nine non-suicidal poets to nine suicidal poets and found similarities in the language of the suicidal poets that foreshadowed their downfalls. This research article was called "Word Use in the Poetry of Suicidal and Non-Suicidal Poets," published in Psychomatic Medicine in 2001. The authors and researches were James Pennebaker and Shannon Wiltsey Stirman, both psychologists.
According to Dr. Pennebaker, suicidal poets used first person singular words like "my" and "I" at much higher rates than those who were not suicidal, and they referenced other people much, much less. There was not much of a difference in emotional content between the two groups, although suicidal poets used words for human interaction much less, such as "listen", "talk" and "share."
It was also found that poets in particular were subject to a higher suicide rate than other literary writers and the public. Pennebaker noted that while all poets did not show signs of manic-depression or other mental illness, they were not a group that was known to be happy and cheerful. He also noted that the language similarities of poets who committed suicide could serve as "linguistic predictors of suicide" for modern poets today.
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