Abstract
<p>Most research on suicide focuses on the progression toward lethal action. Fewer studies have lookedat 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 ofquestions that, while groundbreaking and well validated, were developed decades ago and without afocus on individuals’ lived experiences. In this study, an online user’s query to formerly suicidal peopleon the popular Reddit platform afforded a novel opportunity to investigate reasons people lived in alarge, naturally occurring sample of 16,648 self-reports about their experiences. Using a new methodfor computer-assisted qualitative content analysis, we identify categories, and themes organizingthose categories, that affirm prior work and also provide new perspectives on that work, as well assuggesting 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-assistedmethods as a way of achieving both scale and interpretable results, and it identifies a number oftheoretical and clinical avenues for further investigation.</p>