Suicide

Welcome to the Making Sense Of: Suicide interdisciplinary research and publications project. The project seeks to examine and explore why it is people choose, quite deliberately, to end their own lives – or why it is that people value death more than they value life. Biological, mental, medical, social, economic, religious and other factors will be considered along with an assessment of the contexts within which acts of suicide take place. The ‘meaning’ of suicide will assessed, particularly in relation to narrative, cultural, and existential influences.

The project will consider a number of core themes.

1. What is Suicide?
~ Naming, defining, and understanding the nature of suicide
~ Assisted suicide and euthanasia
~ Is any act of self-destruction suicidal?
~ Aggression or despair: Is suicide merely self-aggression or aggression against an other?
~ Is suicide ever a rational choice?
~ Whose death is it, anyway? Legal and judicial concerns

2. Why? The Value(s) of Suicide or What is it Good For?
~ Critical explorations: what positive value may the concept of suicide hold?
~ When suicide becomes a lifestyle choice: justification and rationalisation
~ Profound attraction and desire; the lure of the abyss
~ The romantic fantasy of control
~ The suicide bomber: going beyond the headlines

3. Resistance and Rehabilitation
~ Prevention and cure: treating the suicidal patient
~ Best practices; non-traditional treatment modalities
~ Cultural competence in understanding suicidal ideation
~ Gender and suicide: commonalities and differences in etiology, frequency, and treatment

4. Suicide and Meaning
~ Representations, explanations and the critique of suicide from the humanities and the arts
~ Suicide in popular media (music, film, literature); the treatment of the subject; judgment and stereotype
~ “Cry for help” or “last word”: exploring the suicide note in fact and fiction
~ Suicide as an act of love

Related themes will also be identified for development and exploration. Out of our deliberations it is anticipated that a series of related cross context research projects will develop.