Suicidology as a Social Practice

Abstract

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 characterised by intellectual, organisational, 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 conceptualise its epistemological, philosophical, and practical norms. This work develops the idea of suicidology as a social practice and considers the implications for research, practice and public discourse.

Understanding empathy: why phenomenology and hermeneutics can help medical education and practice

“…I suggest that instead, empathy functions as the 'return of the repressed' in medicine. It requires us to face up to the deep challenges that accrue to a social practice like medicine (Fitzpatrick et al 2014), and makes visible why it happens, and why it matters, that biomedicine continues to reproduce distinctions between mind and body, knowledge and society, technical knowledge and 'medical humanities', instead of looking to the ways in which these are inseparable, integrative and dynamically interactive. It requires facing up to the relationship between qualitative and quantitative epistemologies: might we say, between ways of understanding and ways of knowing?…”

Scientism as a Social Response to the Problem of Suicide

“…Yet disagreements over methodology and the value of Bnonscientific^theories (de Wilde 2002; Knizek 2011), the disjunction between scientific and subjective accounts of suicidal behaviour (Cutcliffe and Ball 2009;Webb 2006), and limited advances in suicide prevention over the past five decades are, for a growing number of scholars, symptoms of a broader crisis of the scientific paradigm of suicide research. But while attempts to subvert the claims of precedence made by scientific suicidology and to broaden the research programme have been a feature of recent critical works (see, for example, Fitzpatrick, Hooker, and Kerridge 2014;Marsh 2010;White 2012), the question of why suicide researchers and prevention organizations have withdrawn from ethical discussion of suicide is a point less frequently raised.…”

Suicide and mental disorders: A discourse of politics, power, and vested interests

“…This is exactly what we have exemplified by means of actual experiences above. Fitzpatrick et al (2015a) pointed out that to give primacy to biomedical approaches to suicide "is both myopic, for it gives insufficient weight to the complexity of suicide or to the degree to which it is embodied and socially felt, and misguided, for it misses opportunities for developing coherent social responses to suicide" (p. 319). It is also a question of values Fitzpatrick et al (2015a).…”

“…She criticized mainstream suicidology, which the scientific committee apparently did not find relevant or appropriate at a suicidology conference. Moreover, Fitzpatrick, Hooker, and Kerridge (2015a) have extensively outlined how, even though suicide research is diverse and multidisciplinary, suicidology must be regarded as a social practice with "an internal authority structure that governs particular ways of seeing and doing" (p. 307); some data are regarded as "evidence," whereas other data are regarded as less important. This is exactly what we have exemplified by means of actual experiences above.…”

“…This editor does it the other way around (chooses the method(s) first, that is, only quantitative) and thus prevents certain research questions from being studied (Hjelmeland, 2016 (Greenhalgh et al, 2016) as well as in the International Journal for Equity in Health (Daniels et al, 2016), where 76 and 170 cosignatories, respectively, call for acceptance of qualitative research on equal terms as quantitative. Fitzpatrick, Hooker, and Kerridge (2015b) pointed out that the political rationales in operation to determine how suicide is researched are symptoms of a "paradigm crisis in contemporary suicide research" (p. 44).…”