Culture, Suicide, and the Human Condition

Culture, Suicide, and the Human Condition PDF Author: Marja-Liisa Honkasalo
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382356
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Suicide is a puzzling phenomenon. Not only is its demarcation problematic but it also eludes simple explanation. The cultures in which suicide mortality is high do not necessarily have much else in common, and neither is a single mental illness such as depression sufficient to lead a person to suicide. In a word, despite its statistical regularity, suicide is unpredictable on the individual level. The main argument emerging from this collection is that suicide should not be understood as a separate realm of pathological behavior but as a form of human action. As such it is always dependent on the decision that the individual makes in a cultural, ethical and socio-economic context, but the context never completely determines the decision. This book also argues that cultural narratives concerning suicide have a problematic double function: in addition to enabling the community to make sense of self-inflicted death, they also constitute a blueprint depicting suicide as a solution to common human problems.

Culture, Suicide, and the Human Condition

Culture, Suicide, and the Human Condition PDF Author: Marja-Liisa Honkasalo
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382356
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book

Book Description
Suicide is a puzzling phenomenon. Not only is its demarcation problematic but it also eludes simple explanation. The cultures in which suicide mortality is high do not necessarily have much else in common, and neither is a single mental illness such as depression sufficient to lead a person to suicide. In a word, despite its statistical regularity, suicide is unpredictable on the individual level. The main argument emerging from this collection is that suicide should not be understood as a separate realm of pathological behavior but as a form of human action. As such it is always dependent on the decision that the individual makes in a cultural, ethical and socio-economic context, but the context never completely determines the decision. This book also argues that cultural narratives concerning suicide have a problematic double function: in addition to enabling the community to make sense of self-inflicted death, they also constitute a blueprint depicting suicide as a solution to common human problems.

Reducing Suicide

Reducing Suicide PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309169437
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
Every year, about 30,000 people die by suicide in the U.S., and some 650,000 receive emergency treatment after a suicide attempt. Often, those most at risk are the least able to access professional help. Reducing Suicide provides a blueprint for addressing this tragic and costly problem: how we can build an appropriate infrastructure, conduct needed research, and improve our ability to recognize suicide risk and effectively intervene. Rich in data, the book also strikes an intensely personal chord, featuring compelling quotes about people's experience with suicide. The book explores the factors that raise a person's risk of suicide: psychological and biological factors including substance abuse, the link between childhood trauma and later suicide, and the impact of family life, economic status, religion, and other social and cultural conditions. The authors review the effectiveness of existing interventions, including mental health practitioners' ability to assess suicide risk among patients. They present lessons learned from the Air Force suicide prevention program and other prevention initiatives. And they identify barriers to effective research and treatment. This new volume will be of special interest to policy makers, administrators, researchers, practitioners, and journalists working in the field of mental health.

Cultural Diversity and Suicide

Cultural Diversity and Suicide PDF Author: Mark M Leach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317786599
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This book adds a vital and overlooked dimension—diversity—to suicide assessments and interventions The literature on the relationship between culture and suicide has historically been widely scattered and often difficult to find. Cultural Diversity and Suicide summarizes that widespread literature so that counselors can begin to include diversity issues as important variables that can help them become even more effective when conducting suicide assessments or interventions. For ease of reading, Cultural Diversity and Suicide is divided into chapters based on ethnicity. The book avoids broad generalizations whenever possible, thus each chapter specifically discusses critical within-group variables (issues relating to gender, age, religion, and sexuality) that should be considered when conducting suicide assessments and interventions. Each chapter includes at least one case study and incorporates clear headings that make it simple to find specific information. Cultural Diversity and Suicide is not a book of cookie-cutter approaches to suicide prevention, nor is it a primer for the novice. Rather, it has been carefully designed to help counselors and counselors-in-training gain a fuller understanding of the issues that may lead individuals from diverse backgrounds to consider suicide—and the cultural aspects of an individual’s heritage that can influence that person’s decision. Written for professionals who have a pre-existing understanding of how to work with suicidal clients, the book begins with a concise but essential overview of traditional suicide risk factors and a brief assessment model (an excellent “memory refresher”), and then moves quickly into specific diversity issues relevant to: European Americans African Americans Asian Americans Hispanic Americans Native Americans Cultural Diversity and Suicide explores ethnicity and its relationship to suicide (for example, suicide rate and reason differences based on ethnic group or ethnic identity), plus meaningful within-group variables such as: lesbian/gay/bisexual issues and the increase in suicide rate based on sexual orientation and sexual identity religious differences—suicide rates among various religious groups, religious differences in views of suicide, views of the afterlife, burial practices, and views of lesbian/gay/bisexual people cultural buffers, such as extended family and religious practice suicide prevention interventions based on cultural differences (essentially, how traditional suicide prevention programs can be altered to include new variables) This book is essential reading for everyone doing the vital work of conducting suicide assessments and interventions. Please consider making it part of your professional/teaching collection today.

A Culture of Caring

A Culture of Caring PDF Author: Dr. Prentice Chandler Chandler
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1475844506
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
As awareness grows about the alarming increase in youth suicide rates, school leaders need information on suicide prevention and postvention. Tragically, the search often begins only after the school community has suffered the loss of a student. Schools must start to be proactive and educate themselves about risk factors and prevention strategies. Designed as a handbook for busy educators, A Culture of Caring: A Suicide Prevention Guide for Schools (K—12) includes information about prevention, intervention, and postvention along with commentary from experts in the field. Each chapter stands alone and does not have to be read in sequence. Resources and descriptions of programs relevant to each chapter are organized by topic. School leaders, counselors, and teachers can use the information to create their own plans or just glance through it to get ideas. With this book, any school community that takes suicide prevention seriously will have access the knowledge, tools and resources to save lives.

Culture of Death

Culture of Death PDF Author: Wesley J. Smith
Publisher: Encounter Books
ISBN: 1594038562
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
When his teenage son Christopher, brain-damaged in an auto accident, developed a 105-degree fever following weeks of unconsciousness, John Campbell asked the attending physician for help. The doctor refused. Why bother? The boy’s life was effectively over. Campbell refused to accept this verdict. He demanded treatment and threatened legal action. The doctor finally relented. With treatment, Christopher’s temperature—which had eventually reached 107.6 degrees—subsided almost immediately. Soon afterward the boy regained consciousness and was learning to walk again. This story is one of many Wesley J. Smith recounts in his award-winning classic critique of the modern bioethics movement, Culture of Death. In this newly updated edition, Smith chronicles how the threats to the equality of human life have accelerated in recent years, from the proliferation of euthanasia and the Brittany Maynard assisted suicide firestorm, to the potential for “death panels” posed by Obamacare and the explosive Terri Schiavo controversy. Culture of Death reveals how more and more doctors have withdrawn from the Hippocratic Oath and how “bioethicists” influence policy by posing questions such as whether organs may be harvested from the terminally ill and disabled. This is a passionate yet coolly reasoned book about the current crisis in medical ethics by an author who has made “the new thanatology” his consuming interest.

The Gendered Landscape of Suicide

The Gendered Landscape of Suicide PDF Author: Anne Cleary
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030166341
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
This book is an attempt to understand suicide from the perspective of a group of men who decided to take their own lives. Their stories imply that male suicide is not, as frequently portrayed, an impulsive action arising from particular, sex-specific, causes but relates to a cluster of interlinked issues which accumulate over time. These issues were not distinctively male concerns but were connected to gender in that the men’s difficulties were exacerbated by the existence of an emotional culture which inhibited males from expressing specific feelings. The prevailing form of masculinity impeded them in developing knowledge of, and speaking about, their emotional needs and from accessing help and this prolonged their suffering and made suicide a possibility. These men produced compelling accounts of their emotional pain which belied notions of male inexpressiveness but the findings point to a link between emotionally constraining cultures and suicidal behaviour for some groups of men.

Oxford Textbook of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention

Oxford Textbook of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention PDF Author: Danuta Wasserman
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198834446
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 857

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Book Description
Part of the authoritative Oxford Textbooks in Psychiatry series, the new edition of the Oxford Textbook of Suicidology and Suicide Prevention remains a key text in the field of suicidology, fully updated with new chapters devoted to major psychiatric disorders and their relation to suicide.

The Idea of Suicide

The Idea of Suicide PDF Author: Michael J. Kral
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429676255
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
This book is about a new theory of suicide as cultural mimesis, or as an idea that is internalized from culture. Written as part of a new, critical focus in suicidology, this volume moves away from the dominant, strictly scientific understanding of suicide as the result of a mental disorder, and towards positioning suicide as an anthropologically salient, community-driven phenomenon. Written by a leading researcher in the field, this volume presents a conception of suicide as culturally scripted, and it demonstrates how suicide becomes a cultural idiom of distress that for some can become a normative option.

Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity

Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity PDF Author: Rob Cover
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317072553
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
Despite increasing tolerance, legal protections against homophobia, and anti-discrimination policies throughout much of the western world, suicide attempts by queer youth remain relatively high. For over twenty years, research into queer youth suicide has debated reasons and risks, although it has also often reiterated assumptions about sexual identity and youth vulnerability. Understanding the cultural context in which suicide becomes a necessary escape from living an unliveable life is the key to queer youth suicide prevention. This book uses cultural theory to outline some of the ways in which queer youth suicide is perceived in popular culture, media and research. It highlights how the ways in which we think about queer youth suicide have changed over time and some of the benefits and limitations of current thinking on the topic. Focusing on identity, Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity also investigates why queer young men continue to attempt suicide. Drawing on approaches from queer theory, cultural studies and sociology, it explores how sexual identity formation, sexual shame and discrepancies in community belonging and exclusions are implicated in the reasons why some queer youth are resilient while others are vulnerable and at risk of suicide. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, media studies, queer theory and social theory with interests in youth, gender and sexuality, and suicidology.

Suicide

Suicide PDF Author: Danuta Wasserman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191026832
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Approximately one million people worldwide commit suicide each year, and at least ten times as many attempt suicide. A considerable number of these people are in contact with members of the healthcare sector, and encounters with suicidal individuals form a common part of the everyday work of many healthcare professionals. Suicide: An unnecessary death examines the pharmacological, psychotherapeutic, and psychosocial measures adopted by psychiatrists, GPs, and other health-care staff, and emphasizes the need for a clearer psychodynamic understanding of the self if patients are to be successfully recognized, diagnosed, and treated. Drawing on the latest research by leading international experts in the field of suicidology, this new edition provides clinicians with an accessible summary of the latest research into suicide and its prevention. The abundance of new literature can make it difficult for those whose clinical practice involves daily contact with suicidal patients to devote sufficient time to penetrating the research and, accordingly, apply new findings in their clinical practice. In light of the WHO Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2020, this new edition is a timely contribution to the field, and a vital and rapid overview, that will increase awareness of suicide prevention methods.