Donatella Marazziti, Giorgio Consoli
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Terror and Suicide. Hauppauge, New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2009, 167 pages.

Modern Psychiatry is challenged by two major problems related to the dramatic upsurge of activity of suicidal terrorism: the effectively increased incidence of post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) and the need of exploring modern suicidal kamikaze’s mentality.
Nowadays, PTSD appears no longer confined amongst front-line combats or veterans, but it is spread amongst the general population and, as such, requires appropriate recognition, beyond the classical rigid nosological systems, and proper treatments.
The second problem is really difficult to resolve, but psychiatrists should, at least, start to propose the need of an international debate on the possibility that suicide bombers may suffer from one or more psychopathological disorders which could benefit from psychiatric interventions. To accomplish this goal, Western and Eastern society should try to overcome some of their current cultural constraints and adopt a more neutral approach to reduce distances and reciprocal diffidence, and begin to find the means of setting up reliable studies in this sense. Such a debate is not necessary for the survival of the most powerful societies, but of the entire world.