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Self-inflicted. Deliberate. Death-intentioned. A critical policy analysis of UK suicide prevention policies 2009-2019
Abstract
Purpose
With encouragement from the World Health Organisation, national suicide prevention policies have come to be regarded as an essential component of the global effort to reduce suicide. However, despite their global significance, the construction, conceptualisation and proposed provisions offered in suicide prevention policies have, to date, been under researched; this study aims to address this gap.
Design/methodology/approach
we critically analysed eight contemporary UK suicide prevention policy documents in use in all four nations of the UK between 2009 and 2019, using Bacchi and Goodwin’s post-structural critical policy analysis.
Findings
The authors argue that across this sample of suicide prevention policies, suicide is constructed as self-inflicted, deliberate and death-intentioned. Consequently, these supposedly neutral definitions of suicide have some significant and problematic effects, often individualising, pathologising and depoliticising suicide in ways that dislocate suicides from the emotional worlds in which they occur. Accordingly, although suicide prevention policies have the potential to think beyond the boundaries of clinical practice, and consider suicide prevention more holistically, the policies in this sample take a relatively narrow focus, often reducing suicide to a single momentary act and centring death prevention at the expense of considering ways to make individual lives more liveable.
Originality/value
UK suicide prevention policies have not been subject to critical analysis; to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study represents the first attempt to examine the way in which suicide is constructed in UK suicide prevention policy documents.
... We took the following steps as set out by Attride-Stirling [64]: 2.6.1. Coding the Material HC and JS devised a coding framework based on the research questions and the critical suicidology literature [37,39]. Using NVivo, meaningful sections of the data were coded into that framework [64], which was discussed and refined as analysis continued. ...
... We endorse positive cultural changes as part of postvention [37] whilst cautioning against putting unrealistic pressure on managers, who may also be grieving or operating within an under-resourced system. ...
People bereaved by suicide are affected psychologically and physically and may be at greater risk of taking their own lives. Whilst researchers have explored the impact of suicide on family members and friends, the area of colleague suicide has been neglected and postvention guidance for supporting surviving colleagues is often poorly developed. This critical integrative review explored the impact of colleague suicide on surviving co-workers and reviewed postvention guidance for workplaces. Systematic searches found 17 articles that met the inclusion criteria. Articles were appraised for quality and extracted data were analysed using a thematic network method. Article quality was moderate. Two global themes were developed: impact of a colleague suicide comprised themes of ‘suicide loss in the workplace’; ‘professional identities and workplace roles’; ‘perceptions of professional uniqueness’; and ‘professional abandonment and silencing’. Postvention following a colleague suicide comprised ‘individualised responses’; ‘the dual function of stigma’; and ‘complex pressure on managers’. A unifying global network ‘after a colleague suicide’ describes the relationships between all themes. A series of disconnects between existing postvention guidance and the needs of impacted workers are discussed. This review demonstrates the need for robust, systemic postvention for colleagues impacted by the complex issue of colleague suicide.
... This approach effectively restricts narratives around mental health and wellbeing and entails overlooking wider social, political and cultural contexts. For example, a recent critical analysis of UK suicide policy found that the definitions of suicide utilized worked to individualize, pathologise and de-politicize suicide, dislocating the acts from the emotional worlds in which they occur (Marzetti et al., 2022). The narrow "momentary" focus of these policies centered "death prevention at the expense of considering ways of making individual lives more liveable" (Marzetti et al., 2022). ...
... For example, a recent critical analysis of UK suicide policy found that the definitions of suicide utilized worked to individualize, pathologise and de-politicize suicide, dislocating the acts from the emotional worlds in which they occur (Marzetti et al., 2022). The narrow "momentary" focus of these policies centered "death prevention at the expense of considering ways of making individual lives more liveable" (Marzetti et al., 2022). We argue that in a similar manner, recent UK NHS interventions have focused on trying to improve the resilience of, or "fix," individual nurses (e.g., through individualized interventions made under the national offer during COVID-19) rather than focus improvements on environmental factors and systems, such as workforce supply issues within the NHS, or trying to move away from problems generated by efficiency focused models of nursing where nursing work is viewed as a series of tasks to be completed (Leary, 2019). ...
It has long been known that nursing work is challenging and has the potential for negative impacts. During the COVID-19 pandemic most nurses’ working landscapes altered dramatically and many faced unprecedented challenges. Resilience is a contested term that has been used with increasing prevalence in healthcare with health professionals encouraging a “tool-box” of stress management techniques and resilience-building skills. Drawing on narrative interview data ( n = 27) from the Impact of Covid on Nurses (ICON) qualitative study we examine how nurses conceptualized resilience during COVID-19 and the impacts this had on their mental wellbeing. We argue here that it is paramount that nurses are not blamed for experiencing workplace stress when perceived not to be resilient “enough,” particularly when expressing what may be deemed to be normal and appropriate reactions given the extreme circumstances and context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
... In answering this, we can turn towards suicide prevention strategies, which are considered integral to national suicide prevention work (World Health Organization, 2021). Although suicide prevention strategies could offer a somewhat unique opportunity to holistically consider suicide away from the confines of a clinical setting (Yip, 2005), such policies often focus on individualistic, medicalised solutions that fail to consider the potential to intervene in the broader social contexts in which suicide happens (Fitzpatrick et al., 2015;Marzetti et al., 2022). ...
Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death amongst young people aged 15–29 globally and amongst this young population, lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT+) young people have higher rates of suicidal thoughts and attempts than their cisgender (non-trans), heterosexual peers. However, despite well-established knowledge on the existence of this health inequality, in the UK there has been a paucity of research exploring why this disparity exists, and this is particularly the case in Scotland. This paper aims to address this gap, reporting on the first study specifically seeking to understand LGBT + young people's suicidal thoughts and attempts in Scotland. We used a qualitative methodology to explore how young people with lived experience of suicidal distress make sense of the relationship between homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, and suicidal thoughts and attempts. We undertook in-depth, narrative interviews with twenty-four LGBT + people aged 16–24, and analysed them using reflexive thematic analysis. Drawing on this analysis, we argue that suicide can be understood as a response to stigma, discrimination and harassment, made possible by a cultural climate that positions LGBT + people as different or other, reinforcing norms regarding gender conformity and sexuality. We suggest in turn, that this cultural climate provides fertile ground from which more explicit acts of homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, such as bullying and family rejection are able to grow. In response to this, LGBT + young people could begin to experience senses of entrapment, rejection and isolation, to which suicidal thoughts and attempts can be understood as responses. Consequently, we propose that these stigma experiences must be taken seriously and tackled directly in order to reduce LGBT + suicide in the future.
Suicide is a leading cause of death. NHS workers, especially female nurses, have heightened vulnerability. Being impacted by a colleague’s suicide can lead to increased suicidality. Postvention refers to support following a suicide. We investigated current, available postvention for NHS workers following a colleague’s suicide and the experiences of staff who deliver it (“supporters”). Twenty-two supporters were interviewed, and data were analyzed using classic grounded theory. The theory of negotiating postvention situations was developed. Supporters must negotiate enabling and disabling elements that form a “postvention situation” and impact behaviors and postvention efficacy. Postvention delivery is emotionally burdensome. Supporters need support, which they do not always receive. Postvention can lead to learning, which can better inform future postvention. The extent to which NHS workers can effectively support colleagues will depend on their postvention situation. As such, work must be done to enable supporters to offer effective postvention in the future.
In this chapter we address the established problem of the heightened risk of suicide amongst LGBTQ+ young people. While this book focuses primarily on sexual diversity, we, as do many of the chapters in the book, adopt an intersectional approach to include gender diversity.
Suicide is a major public health concern, patterned by systematic inequalities, with lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT+) people being one example of a minoritised group that is more likely to think about and attempt suicide worldwide. To address this, UK national suicide prevention policies have suggested that LGBT+ people should be prioritised in prevention activities. However, there is little research seeking to understand how LGBT+ suicide is re/presented in political and policy spheres. In this article, we critically analyse all mentions of LGBT+ suicide in UK parliamentary debates between 2009 and 2019 and in the eight suicide prevention policies in use during this period. We argue that LGBT+ suicide is understood in two contrasting ways: firstly, as a pathological 'problem', positioning LGBT+ people either as risks or as at risk and in need of mental health support. Alternatively, suicide can be seen as externally attributable to perpetrators of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate, requiring anti-hate activities as part of suicide prevention. In response, we argue that although these explanations may appear oppositional; they both draw on reductive explanations of LGBT+ suicide, failing to consider the complexity of suicidal distress, thus constraining understandings of suicide and suicide prevention.
Suicide prevention policies set out government strategies and priorities for action and in doing so construct meanings, legitimise knowledge and frame possibilities. Despite their importance, prevention policies remain underexamined and taken for granted. Using Bacchi's poststructuralist ‘What's The Problem Represented To Be’ approach we critically analyse UK suicide prevention policies as sites of biopolitical surveillance and consider how suicide is constructed within such policy regimes. Drawing on Foucault, we contextualise suicide as an object and focus of biopolitical surveillance. We argue that suicide prevention policies seek to negate the contingency and complexity of suicide and instead represent it as amenable to biopolitical governance. Prevention policies do this by framing suicide as a visible and predictable object that can be known and governed via surveillance driven risk management. Such policies risk marginalising some publics, and diverting attention from the political, social and economic contexts of injustice in which suicides occur.
Historically, the UK welfare system was designed to protect those in greatest need, which provided the necessary financial and psychological security for the unemployed and especially for the chronically ill and disabled community who are unfit to work. This paper identifies how social policy reforms based on fiscal priorities have had the opposite effect, creating a crisis for disability benefit claimants. Conducted over a period of ten years, the Preventable Harm Project demonstrates the negative impact of the adoption of American social and labour market policies, and the often fatal human consequences of the removal of medical opinion from disability benefit assessments. I argue that the adoption of the Work Capability Assessment for the restriction of disability benefit(s) has created preventable harm for those in greatest need, and this article identifies the negative influences impacting on UK social policy reforms to the detriment of the chronically ill and disabled community.
Despite increasing research on suicide, we continue to see rising rates, particularly among youth. In answering recent calls for critical suicidology and transdisciplinary approaches to research, I discuss expanding beyond the paradigmatic confines of suicidology by proposing two related approaches to improve our science: intersectionality theory and socioecological theory. Following a discussion of social identity and its relation to suicide risk, I review the literature on these topics and highlight the importance of paying attention to the unique experiences of youth through the study of intersectionality and using socioecological models in our research moving forward.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the preventable harm created by the adoption of austerity measures in 2010, added to the welfare reforms introduced in 2008 which, collectively, have negative implications for population mental health in the UK.
Design/methodology/approach
A critical reflection of published research papers and key policy documents in this area.
Findings
Negative mental health consequences of the combined impact of welfare reforms and austerity measures in the UK since 2010 are identified when relating to disability benefit assessments, and to the increased punitive conditionality applied to disability benefit claimants, as those in greatest need now live in fear of making a claim for financial support from the state or of losing benefits to which they are entitled.
Research limitations/implications
This paper identifies the creation of preventable harm by social policy reforms, commonly known as “welfare reforms”. The implications for social scientists are the disregard of academic peer-reviewed social policy research by policymakers, and the adoption of critically challenged policy-based research as used to justify political objectives.
Practical implications
The negative mental health impact of UK government social policy reforms has been identified and highlights the human consequences of the adoption of the biopsychosocial model of assessment.
Social implications
Reducing the numbers of sick and disabled people claiming long-term disability benefit has increased the numbers claiming unemployment benefit, with no notable increase in the numbers of disabled people in paid employment and with many service users in greatest need living in fear of the next enforced disability assessment.
Originality/value
This paper demonstrates the preventable harm created by the use of a flawed disability assessment model, together with the adoption of punitive conditionality and the increased suicides linked to UK welfare reforms which are influenced by American social policies.
Suicide is one of the most significant issues facing Indigenous communities throughout Canada. The rate of Indigenous deaths by suicide is severely disproportionate to that of the general public. While the last three decades have seen substantial investments in suicidology research within the Canadian context, rates of Indigenous deaths by suicide have remained relatively stable, and little remains known about effective means to reduce Indigenous deaths by suicide. A movement of critical suicidology scholars across health and social sciences is beginning to challenge the mainstream approach of suicidology research and suicide prevention, citing concerns about the ideological and epistemic foundations. In this article, the author highlights how these critiques are relevant to Indigenous contexts. Challenging a range of assumptions, the author considers the need to rethink the ideological foundations of research on Indigenous suicide. Finally, the author considers two methodological projects that are integral to forming a critical approach to Indigenous suicidology research and Indigenous suicide prevention praxis–culturally grounded research and decolonizing research.
One of the most well-established "truths" in suicidology is that mental disorders play a significant role in at least 90% of suicides, and a causal relationship between the two is often implied. In this essay, we argue that the evidence base for this "truth" is weak and that there is much research questioning the 90% statistic. Based on numerous examples, we also argue that ideology, politics, power, and vested interests among influential professionals in the field obstruct argument-based discussion of this issue. We also discuss unfortunate consequences of the constant reiteration of the 90% statistic.
Suicide and Agency offers an original and timely challenge to existing ways of understanding suicide. Through the use of rich and detailed case studies, the authors assembled in this volume explore how interplay of self-harm, suicide, personhood and agency varies markedly across site (Greenland, Siberia, India, Palestine and Mexico) and setting (self-run leprosy colony, suicide bomb attack, cash-crop farming, middle-class mothering). Rather than starting from a set definition of suicide, they empirically engage suicide fields-the wider domains of practices and of sense making, out of which realized, imaginary, or disputed suicides emerge. By drawing on ethnographic methods and approaches, a new comparative angle to understanding suicide beyond mainstream Western bio-medical and classical sociological conceptions of the act as an individual or social pathology is opened up. The book explores a number of ontological assumptions about the role of free will, power, good and evil, personhood, and intentionality in both popular and expert explanations of suicide. Suicide and Agency offers a substantial and ground-breaking contribution to the emerging field of the anthropology of suicide. It will appeal to a range of scholars and students, including those in anthropology, sociology, social psychology, cultural studies, suicidology, and social studies of death and dying. © Ludek Broz, Daniel Münster and the contributors, All Rights Reserved.
Objectives
Despite the common use of contagion to analogize the spread of suicide, there is a lack of rigorous assessment of the underlying concept or theory supporting the use of this term. The present study aims to examine the varied definitions and potential utility of the term contagion in suicide-related research.
Methods
100 initial records and 240 reference records in English were identified as relevant with our research objectives, through systematic literature screening. We then conducted narrative syntheses of various definitions and assessed their potential value for generating new research.
Results
20.3% of the 340 records used contagion as equivalent to clustering (contagion-as-cluster); 68.5% used it to refer to various, often related mechanisms underlying the clustering phenomenon (contagion-as-mechanism); and 11.2% without clear definition. Under the category of contagion-as-mechanism, four mechanisms have been proposed to explain how suicide clusters occurred: transmission (contagion-as-transmission), imitation (contagion-as-imitation), contextual influence (contagion-as-context), and affiliation (contagion-as-affiliation). Contagion-as-cluster both confounds and constrains inquiry into suicide clustering by blending proposed mechanism with the phenomenon to be studied. Contagion-as-transmission is, in essence, a double or internally redundant metaphor. Contagion-as-affiliation and contagion-as-context involve mechanisms that are common mechanisms that often occur independently of apparent contagion, or may serve as a facilitating background. When used indiscriminately, these terms may create research blind spots. Contagion-as-imitation combines perspectives from psychology, sociology, and public health research and provides the greatest heuristic utility for examining whether and how suicide and suicidal behaviors may spread among persons at both individual and population levels.
Conclusion
Clarifying the concept of “suicide contagion” is an essential step for more thoroughly investigating its mechanisms. Developing a clearer understanding of the apparent spread of suicide-promoting influences can, in turn, offer insights necessary to build the scientific foundation for prevention and intervention strategies that can be applied at both individual and community levels.
This paper explores the notion that the writing of history has played a role in the making of modern suicide, and that it can have its uses in its "unmaking." Examples of the making of modern suicide come from the writings of nineteenth century doctors concerned with formulating new medical truths of suicide, and who came to describe well-known historical "suicides" (e.g., that of Cato) in terms of pathology as part of this project. The medicalized suicide that was formed in the nineteenth century has come to dominate how the problem is conceptualized and managed. The author's own experiences of working in a community mental health team and his involvement in suicide prevention are drawn on here, and a critique is offered of the "regime of truth" centering on the "compulsory ontology of pathology" that seems to govern so much thinking in this area. It is argued that the writing of history can provide useful tools when seeking to "denaturalize" particular ways of thinking and acting that have come to be taken as necessary, real, and true. The paper draws on the work of Michel Foucault, and examples are given of how the writing of the history of self-accomplished death can be a form of critique. Histories that seek to map the establishment and circulation of new "truths" of suicide—and the formation of objects, concepts, and subjects in relation to these "truths"—offer possibilities in terms of problematizing unquestioned contemporary assumptions and practices, enabling us "to think against the present."
Thematic analysis is a poorly demarcated, rarely acknowledged, yet widely used qualitative analytic method within psychology. In this paper, we argue that it offers an accessible and theoretically flexible approach to analysing qualitative data. We outline what thematic analysis is, locating it in relation to other qualitative analytic methods that search for themes or patterns, and in relation to different epistemological and ontological positions. We then provide clear guidelines to those wanting to start thematic analysis, or conduct it in a more deliberate and rigorous way, and consider potential pitfalls in conducting thematic analysis. Finally, we outline the disadvantages and advantages of thematic analysis. We conclude by advocating thematic analysis as a useful and flexible method for qualitative research in and beyond psychology.
An increasingly common way that high rates of male suicide are understood is via men’s ostensibly poorer abilities to talk about – and more generally seek help for – problems in general, and emotional problems specifically. This has led to the development of public mental health campaigns which urge men to ‘speak up’ more often about the problems they face. I argue that both the initial claim, and the enactment of this claim in public mental health campaigns, is problematic, resting on simplistic assumptions about men and gender difference, and serving to detract attention from structural drivers of suicide. Drawing on a narrative analysis of in-depth interviews with ten men who had self-harmed, thought about, or attempted suicide, this paper focuses attention on the content and contexts of ‘talk’. I argue that public health campaigns promoting ‘talk’ in response to male suicide neglect the interpersonal and structural contexts in which talk occurs, including considerations of power and structural inequalities.
Suicide prevention occurs within a web of social, moral, and political relations that are acknowledged, yet rarely made explicit. In this work, I analyse these interrelations using concepts of moral and political economy to demonstrate how moral norms and values interconnect with political and economic systems to inform the way suicide prevention is structured, legitimated, and enacted. Suicide prevention is replete with ideologies of individualism, risk, and economic rationalism that translate into a specific set of social practices. These bring a number of ethical, procedural, and distributive considerations to the fore. Closer attention to these issues is needed to reflect the moral and political contexts in which decision-making about suicide prevention occurs, and the implications of these decisions for policy, practice, and for those whose lives they impact.
Research has shown that mental healthcare policies aimed at achieving autonomy and integration for people with mental disorders have been developing all over the world. Critics working from a governmentality perspective have argued that these changes are associated with broader neoliberal strategies and aims. In France however, there is no systematic work on this development. In this study, we have applied Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be’ approach to the main texts published by the French Ministry of Health since 2005, in order to study how the citizenship of mental health users is problematized. According to our analysis, the objectives of the autonomization, responsibilization and self-management of users have become increasingly central, following the recognition of users’ rights, social inclusion and the fight against the stigma of mental disorders. These developments have many points of contact with neoliberal governmentality. We conclude with recommendations for empirical research on discourses and practices in the field, where mental health policies are translated into mental health projects and practice.
Suicide is a significant issue worldwide and despite comprehensive prevention activities, suicide stigma remains. To explore this issue, we used critical discourse analysis to examine how Australian suicide prevention documents (n = 8) constructed people living with thoughts of suicide. We found that risk and biomedical discourses dominated, with people experiencing suicide ideation constructed as dangerous, different, lacking coping skills, and burdensome. We propose that future suicide prevention activities address potentially stigmatizing language, broaden support and advocacy options, and meaningfully include people with lived experience of suicidal ideation or behavior in the development of policy and interventions.
Suicide is complex; yet suicide research is dominated by ‘psy’ disciplines which can falter when seeking to explain social patterning of suicide rates, and how this relates to individual actions. This article discusses a multidisciplinary report which aimed to advance understandings of socioeconomic inequalities in suicide rates in the UK. Contrasts are drawn between health psychology and sociology. Important intersections are highlighted, including a lack of attention to socioeconomic inequalities, and an emphasis on adverse life experiences and emotions to understand inequalities and suicide. There are also curious disconnects, both within and between relevant psychological and sociological perspectives. The article argues that there are significant gaps in existing theorization regarding suicide, which can only be addressed through meaningful inter-disciplinary collaborations between sociologists, psychologists and others. Current theorization in mainstream suicide research is limited by its failure to engage with enduring, yet vitally important sociological debates regarding structure and agency, nature and culture.
In 2016 the World Health Organization published the first global health strategy to address viral hepatitis, setting a goal of eliminating viral hepatitis as a major public health threat by 2030. While the field has been motivated by this goal, to date there has been little critical attention paid to the productive capacity and constitutive effects of this policy. How is governing taking place through the mechanism of this global strategy, and how are its goals and targets shaping what is made thinkable (indeed, what is made as the real) about hepatitis C and its elimination? And with what effects? Taking the Global Health Sector Strategy on Viral Hepatitis, 2016-2021 as a text for analysis, we draw on poststructural thinking on problematisation and governmental technologies to examine how 'elimination' - as a proposal - constitutes the problem of hepatitis C. We critically consider the conceptual logics underpinning the elimination goal and targets, and the multiple material-discursive effects of this policy. We examine how governing takes place through numbers, by analysing 'target-setting' (and its accompanying practices of management, quantification and surveillance) as governmental technologies. We consider how the goal of elimination makes viral hepatitis visible and amenable to structuring, action and global management. Central to making viral hepatitis visible and manageable is quantification. Viral hepatitis is made as a problem requiring urgent global health management not through the representation of its effects on bodies or situated communities but rather through centralising inscription practices and comparison of estimated rates. It is important to remain alert to the multiple makings of hepatitis C and draw attention to effects which might be obscured due to a primary focus on quantification and management. To do so is to recognise the ontopolitical effects of governmental technologies, especially for communities 'targeted' by these strategies (including people who inject drugs).
ISSUES OF CHILDCARE AFFORDABILITY, availability and flexibility in Australia have long restricted choice for parents wanting to use formal child care. To address these issues, the Australian Government developed the Jobs for Families Child Care Package, which passed through the Australian Parliament in 2017. This paper reports findings from a study that employed Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be’ (WPR) methodology to analyse the potential impact of the Package on parents’ childcare choices. Consistent with submissions from peak bodies and policy analysts, Bacchi’s WPR analysis uncovered potential lived and subjectification effects, which are likely to diminish the choices of disadvantaged families. Additionally, the analysis identified three discursive effects that complicate workforce participation and childcare choice. Utilising a WPR approach and disrupting the Australian Government’s positioning of child care as a means to support workforce participation can inform advocacy that aims to re-centre childcare policy onto the rights of the child.
One of the symptoms of post financial crisis austerity in the UK has been an increase in the numbers of suicides, especially by people who have experienced welfare reform. This article develops and utilises an analytic framework of psychopolitical autopsy to explore media coverage of ‘austerity suicide’ and to take seriously the psychic life of austerity (internalisation, shame, anxiety), embedding it in a context of social dis-ease.
Drawing on three distinct yet interrelated areas of literature (the politics of affect and psychosocial dynamics of welfare, post and anti-colonial psychopolitics, and critical suicidology), the article aims to better understand how austerity ‘kills’. Key findings include understanding austerity suicides as embedded within an affective economy of the anxiety caused by punitive welfare retrenchment, the stigmatisation of being a recipient of benefits, and the internalisation of market logic that assigns value through ‘productivity’ and conceptualises welfare entitlement as economic ‘burden’. The significance of this approach lies in its ability to widen analytic framing of suicide from an individual and psychocentric focus, to illuminate culpability of government reforms while still retaining the complexity of suicide, and thus to provide relevant policy insights about welfare reform.
Critical suicidology is an emerging area of scholarship and praxis that brings together academics, community activists, service users, practitioners, policy makers, family members and persons with lived experience, to rethink what it means to study suicide and enact practices of suicide prevention in more diverse and creative, less psycho-centric and less depoliticized, ways. In this paper I begin to articulate what it might mean to "think like a critical suicidologist," the questions that might get asked from this position, the academic and activist allies who might get recruited to the cause, and the potential cracks we might open up in pursuit of a more hopeful, life-affirming, and just future.
This book offers a novel, refreshing and politically engaged way to think about public policy. Instead of treating policy as simply the government’s best efforts to address problems, it offers a way to question critically how policies produce “problems” as particular sorts of problems, with important political implications. Governing, it is argued, takes place through these problematizations. According to the authors, interrogating policies and policy proposals as problematizations involves asking questions about the assumptions they rely upon, how they have been made, what their effects are, as well as how they could be unmade. To enable this form of critical analysis, this book introduces an analytic strategy, the “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach. It features examples of applications of the approach with topics as diverse as obesity, economic policy, migration, drug and alcohol policy, and gender equality to illustrate the growing popularity of this way of thinking and to provide clear and useful examples of poststructural policy analysis in practice.
There is no internationally agreed-upon set of terms, definitions, or classifications for the range of thoughts, communications and behaviours that are related to self-injurious behaviours, with or without the intent to die. Nor is there an agreed taxonomy that encompasses the full spectrum of what is clinically defined as suicide-related behaviours. The suicide literature remains replete with confusing (and sometimes derogatory or pejorative) terms, definitions, descriptors, and classifications that make it difficult, if not impossible, to compare and contrast different research studies, clinical reports or epidemiological surveys, or to make comparisons, generalisations or extrapolations. This chapter will briefly review these issues from a historical perspective and highlight some of the more contentious and confusing terminologies and definitional obfuscations that are currently being used, including distinctions between and among parasuicide, non-suicidal self-injury and deliberate self-harm. The chapter will present some of the current efforts to improve our ability to communicate clearly, consistently and confidently about those elements that define the suicidal state – ideations, emotions, and behaviours. Key questions and challenges for the future – and their relevance for the advancement of suicide prevention – are presented. Recommendations are made as to next steps in the process of developing and implementing a standardised nomenclature and classification system for the field of suicidology.
While individual cases of suicide can frequently generate widespread feelings of loss and grief, a collective sense of political responsibility for the enduring and differential conditions of suicidality remains missing today. The aim of this article is to develop the broad outlines of a political approach to suicide as a matter of social justice. In contrast to the dominant psychological and psychiatric approaches to the study and prevention of suicide, this article advances the thesis that suicide is a solitary “answer” to a set of collective and institutional questions about the conditions of a dignified human existence that we (i.e., most political societies) have not confronted in a meaningful or sustained way. I argue that a political account of suicide should ultimately point in the direction of a new right to life movement, the aim of which is to secure the conditions of human dignity for all persons.
Suicide has long been the subject of philosophical, literary, theological and cultural–historical inquiry. But despite the diversity of disciplinary and methodological approaches that have been brought to bear in the study of suicide, we argue that the formal study of suicide, that is, suicidology, is characterized by intellectual, organizational and professional values that distinguish it from other ways of thinking and knowing. Further, we suggest that considering suicidology as a “social practice” offers ways to usefully conceptualize its epistemological, philosophical and practical norms. This study develops the idea of suicidology as a social practice and considers the implications for research, practice and public discourse.
In this article I propose a relational understanding of emotions which I believe overcomes many of the dualisms in previous sociological attempts to understand this realm of social life. I also suggest that it is rare in such studies for the object under scrutiny to be defined, and attempt to answer the question of what it is we are exploring when we approach emotions. The view is put forward of emotions as complexes rather than things, ones that are multi-dimensional in their composition: they only arise within relationships, but they have a corporeal, embodied aspect as well as a socio-cultural one. They are constituted by techniques of the body learned within a social habitus, which produces emotional dispositions that may manifest themselves in particular situations. Furthermore, these techniques of the body are part of the power relations that play an important part in the production and regulation of emotion. Using examples of emotions like love and aggression, I argue my central thesis - that emotions are not expressions of inner processes, but are modes of communication within relationships and interdependencies.
Preventing suicide in England
- HM Government
HM Government (2012), "Preventing suicide in England", available at: www.gov.uk/government/uploads/
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Suicide prevention: policy and strategy, house of commons library
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Suicide prevention strategy 2013-2016
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Every life matters: Scotland’s suicide prevention action plan
- Scottish Government
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Talk to me 2: suicide and self harm prevention strategy for Wales 2015-2020
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Critiquing contemporary suicidology
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LIVE LIFE. An implementation guide for suicide prevention in countries
- J White
White, J. (2017), "What can critical suicidology do?", Death Studies, Vol. 41 No. 8, pp. 472-480.
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