Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us

by Will Storr

Gordon co-authored a paper that argued perfectionism has been significantly underestimated as an ‘amplifier’ for suicidal ideation. Amongst other studies, he referenced a survey in which 56 per cent of friends and family members of someone who’d killed themselves referred to the deceased, unprompted, as a ‘perfectionist’. In another, interviews with mothers of male suicide victims found 71 per cent of them saying their sons had placed ‘exceedingly high’ demands on themselves. The most comprehensive study on the issue to date found a ‘strong link’ between perfectionism and suicide. Authors of the 2017 meta-analysis described perfectionists as being ‘locked in an endless loop of self-defeating over-striving in which each new task is another opportunity for hard self-rebuke, disappointment and failure.’