The Many Languages of Suicide?

David Webb - “failed suicide”

Quality of Life for All of LifeSuicide prevention: its social, political and

developmental contexts

9th Annual National Conference of Suicide Prevention Australia, Sydney 2002

The Languages of Suicidology - Theory

• medical/biological• brain anatomy/chemistry, genetics

• psychiatric• DSM “disorders” (e.g. depression)• also psychoanalytic legacy - waning

• psychological• thoughts, feelings, desires, intentions

• sociological• culture, work, isolation, alienation• also demographics, epidemiology

• psychosocial• wellbeing, rehabilitation

The Languages of Suicidology - Practice• clinical interventions - therapies

• prevention, treatment, postvention • public policy (LIFE etc)

• infrastructure, economics, legal, media• field workers and carers

Special populations:• youth, men & elderly• abuse/trauma victims• indigenous people• gays and lesbians• refugees• survivors

Some key themes:• contemplators, attempters, completers • mental health/illness• esp. depression• self-harm (parasuicide)• drugs and alcohol

Absent Voices 1 - the self in suicidology

• medical/biological• virtually nothing - emphasis on the

body• psychiatric

• emphasis on the “abnormal”• psychological

• mind as the essence of being• sociological - incl. social psychology

• defined in terms of the “other” - i.e. some other self

• psychosocial• attempts to integrate all these• more open to spirituality

Absent Voices 2 - spirituality

The suicidal dilemma:

“What does it mean to me that I exist?”

• meaninglessness the source of hopelessness

• the age-old spiritual question “Who am I?”

• philosophically, Camus’ assertion:

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is

suicide”

• spiritual wisdom, practices and metaphors can aid our understanding of suicidality

Absent Voices 3 - the “original voice”

•first-hand accounts of what it feels like•essential if we are to understand suicide•cannot be expressed in the “flatland”

language of (ostensibly) objective science •narratives (literature, poetry etc) needed

to inform and validate science and policy•must restore the legitimacy of subjectivity•scholarly methods exist for this

Silence feeds ignorance, stigma and taboo

Edwin S. Shneidman

“Neither psychology nor psychiatry can be counted as grand successes as far as suicide is concerned.”

“… the keys to understanding suicide are made of plain language … the proper language of suicidology is lingua franca – the ordinary everyday words that are found in the verbatim reports of beleaguered suicidal minds”

“It is the words that suicidal people say – about their psychological pain and their frustrated psychological needs – that make up the essential vocabulary of suicide. Suicide prevention can be everyone’s business”

“All our present well-meaning attention to demographic variables – age, sex, ethnicity, and so on – and all our analysis of the ongoing electrochemical activities of the brain cannot tell us what we centrally want to know about the drama of emotions in the mind, the constricted thinking and the aching for peace.”