Twenty-five doctors and 50 nurses working in the medical wards of a general hospital were interviewed. They were asked to indicate typical motives for self-poisoning and were then shown brief accounts of four typical case histories. They were asked to choose from a list of motives those they considered applied to each case. They then rated each motive for acceptability and understandability, and each case for sympathy and readiness to help.

Motives were of two principal types—‘manipulative’ (i.e. aimed at eliciting a response from others) and ‘depressive’ (i.e. communicating despair and aimed at withdrawal, escape or death). ‘Depressive’ motives were more acceptable and evoked more sympathy or readiness to help in both doctors and nurses than ‘manipulative’ motives.

Doctors and nurses differed in various ways. Nurses were generally more accepting, more sympathetic and more likely to seek professional help as an alternative way of coping. Doctors distinguished more clearly between ‘suicidal’ motives, of which they were relatively accepting, and ‘manipulative’ motives, which they accepted less. Attitudes to the four cases differed, primarily in the motives attributed. Those differences may also reflect differing severity of problems, personal responsibility for problems, social class, sex or age.