Critical Suicidology

Current suicide-prevention strategies are limited – this book explores critical, creative, and life-affirming alternatives.

Critical Suicidology introduces alternative approaches to suicide prevention, approaches that don’t pathologize inequality and distress but rather take into consideration the social, political, and cultural contexts of people’s lives.

Globally, suicides account for a significant number of premature deaths every year. Traditional approaches to suicide research and prevention are not working for everyone, but why is this? And what can be done about it?

In Critical Suicidology, a team of international scholars, practitioners, and people directly affected by suicide argue that the field of suicidology has become too focused on the biomedical paradigm: a model that pathologizes distress and obscures the social, political, and historical contexts that contribute to human suffering. The authors introduce the perspectives of those who have direct personal knowledge of suicide and suicidal behaviour and propose alternative approaches to suicide prevention that are creative, socially just, and culturally responsive. In the right hands, this book could save lives.