Internet suicide

Communities of affirmation and the lethality of communication

Bibliographic Data

ID2394925
AuthorsRonald Niezen (McGill University, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume50
Issue2
Pages303-322
Publication date2013-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTranscultural Psychiatry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1363-4615 • E-ISSN: 1461-7471
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1363461512473733
PMID23315147
OpenAlexW1991849382
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited25

As a tool of instant information dissemination and social networking, the Internet has made possible the formation and affirmation of public identities based on personality traits that are usually characterized by clinicians as pathological. The wide variety of online communities of affirmation reveals new conditions for permissiveness and inclusiveness in expressions of these socially marginal and clinically pathologized identities. Much the same kind of discourse common to these online communities is evident in some suicide forums. Web sites with suicide as their central raison d'être, taken together, encompass a wide range of ideas and commitments, including many that provide collective affirmation outside of (and often with hostility toward) professional intervention. The paradox of a potentially life-affirming effect of such forums runs counter to a stark dualism between online therapy versus "prochoice" forums and, by extension, to simple models of the influence of ideas on the lethality of suicide. Different forums either intensify or mitigate self-destructive tendencies in ways that are significant for understanding the place of communication in the occurrence of suicide and for therapeutic practice

Cyberspace · Dualism · Epistemology · Hostility · Internet privacy · Online community · Political science · Psychiatry · Public relations · Sociology · The Internet · World Wide Web · Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies · Law · Mental Health and Patient Involvement · Psychology · Social Psychology · Suicide and Self-Harm Studies