Fig. 2: Clustered Multidimensional Scaling Solution Dendrogram and Configuration Plot.

A(left panel) shows a dendrogram illustrating hierarchical relationships between the suicide narratives based on each of the 77 qualitative codes. The different narratives are represented on the horizontal axis, each with a separate letter indicator. The vertical axis, height, represents Euclidean distance, a measure of multidimensional similarity between the narratives. Narratives connected at greater heights are more dissimilar than narratives connected at lower heights. Each of the three clusters is indicated with a colored box. The color of the indicator boxes and each narrative point in the figure corresponds to the narrative’s cluster membership. B(right panel) shows a configuration plot illustrating the similarities between the narratives, based on the 77 subcategory codes, in two-dimensional space. The two-dimensional distance between any pair of narratives is equivalent to the Euclidean distance between those narratives. Narratives appearing closer together are more similar than narratives that are farther apart. The mean qualitative content of each cluster by code is depicted in Fig. 2.