Thinking (differently) about suicide

In Searching for a Rose Garden: challenging psychiatry, fostering mad studies, Chapter 10 is called “Thinking (differently) about suicide”. Written by David Webb, it concerns his enquiry into suicide after he stopped being actively suicidal:

“… As I continued to wade through the literature, I realised that the actual suicidal person was remarkably absent from all this expert knowledge. It was as though these experts were looking at people like me through the wrong end of their telescope so that we were little more than almost invisible dots on the distant horizon.

The suicidal urge to die only passed for me when I finally attended to the spiritual crisis that lay at its heart, so I was looking in the literature of suicidology for any discussion of spirituality. I guess I was not too surprised to find spirituality virtually prohibited and banned from the academic discipline that claims to be the scientific study of suicide. But I was surprised – indeed stunned and appalled – to see the first person voice of suicidal people was almost totally absent …

My investigations led me to conclude that are several reasons why the first person voice of suicidal people is largely absent from suicidology. None of them are good …”

You can read more within Chapter 10 of the book cited above.

And/or you can read more in David Webb’s book Thinking About Suicide, which is subtitled “Contemplating and comprehending the urge to die”.

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1 Comment

  1. Editorial (on behalf of Sabrina - see below) (Post author)

    Hi, I’m a mentor for a teens program where I’m working with high school students who are getting ready to graduate. My mentees and I are talking about mental health and suicide. I thought it would be a great topic because it’s an important conversation for their age group and it offers some great discussions and most of them have seen 13 Reasons Why which centers around similar topics.

    Our latest activity was to work with a person you’ve never met before and do some research on the topic together! One group found your page … while doing some research and our whole group found the information on your page helpful to our mental health discussion. Thanks!

    That group (Addie and Danny) also came across another helpful article about this article about suicide prevention and warning signs: https://choicemutual.com/suicide-prevention/

    Have a great day, Sabrina

    Reply

Any reply would be very welcome

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