This study concentrates mainly on investigating, from an epidemiological point of view, the pre-college educational backgrounds of all the students committing suicide at Kyoto University (80 cases) during a 1 b year period starting from 1956. The results revealed a strong competitiveness for an entrance examination of the name university directed through familial, secondary educational, and personality backgrounds, or in other words a vicious "defeatphobia" circle. This peculiar characteristic inherent in "performance Type” provides one of the main keys to answering the question of why there are so many suicides at Kyoto University.
Looking at the problem from this background and taking into consideration the limitation to reforming the entrance examination system and to implementing personality screening tests, it suggests that as the main strategy for suicide prevention, greater emphasis should be placed ova the importance of enlarging personal contacts between friends or students and teachers during the period starting from the beginning of high school through university.