Suicide

The World Health Organization estimates that there are more than 800,000 suicides across the globe every year; at least ten to twenty times as many engage in nonfatal suicidal behavior. Suicidal behavior is culturally patterned in that rates, risk factors, forms, scenarios, methods, and meanings vary greatly across age, gender, and cultural contexts. The dominant explanatory model links suicide to mental disorders, particularly depression, but interesting research contextualizing suicide now provides evidence for a number of different interpretations. Alternative explanatory models, for example, are of suicide as escape from unbearable circumstances or expectations, as a desperate protest or rebellion against family and/or societal oppression and abuse, as a relational rather than an individual act, as a specific way of communicating distress, and/or as a way of taking back lost control in life. Consequences of hegemonic masculinity also seem important for suicide for both men and women, albeit in different ways

Distress · Explanatory power · Masculinity · Mental health · Oppression · Political science · Politics · Psychiatry · Sociology · Clinical Psychology · Gender Studies · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Mental Health Treatment and Access · Psychology · Social Psychology · Suicide and Self-Harm Studies

• A Theoretical Model for Interpreting Suicidal Behaviour as Communication

  Open Access•Birthe Loa Knizek, Heidi Hjelmeland•Theory & Psychology•2007

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• Situating Suicide as an Anthropological Problem

  Open Access•J Staples, Tom Widger•Culture Medicine and Psychiatry•2012

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• Suicide and culture

  Julio Xerfan•International Journal of Culture…•2013

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• Psychological Autopsy Studies as Diagnostic Tools

  Heidi Hjelmeland, Gudrun Dieserud et al.•Death Studies•2012

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