Multidisciplinary and comprehensive in scope, this volume serves as an authoritative overview of scientific knowledge about suicide and its prevention, providing a foundation in theory, research, and clinical applications. Issues relevant to clinical case management are highlighted, and various treatment modalities are discussed in light of the latest research findings.
Integrating research from multiple disciplines, this text provides a comprehensive perspective on suicide and examines what works in prevention and intervention. The author is a pioneering researcher and clinician who addresses the classification, prevalence, and assessment of suicide and self-destructive behaviors and explores risk factors at multiple levels, from demographic variables, personality traits, psychiatric diagnoses, and neurobiological factors to the social and cultural context. Student-friendly features include text boxes that dive deeply into specific issues, instructive figures and tables, thought-provoking clinical cases, and engaging examples from literature and popular culture. The text reviews medical and psychosocial treatment and prevention approaches, discusses ways to help those bereaved by suicide, and considers issues of professional liability.
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.
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.
"Evidence-based methods have, over recent decades, enabled us to prune the vineyard of suicidology. Read this book to see how the field looks today, trimmed back and flourishing as never before. It will show you much of what we know (and what we don't know) about suicide, and take you to the cutting edge." John T. Maltsberger, MD, Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA --Book Jacket.
Drawing on diverse theoretical and textual sources, The Gender of Suicide presents a critical study of the ways in which contemporary society understands suicide, exploring suicide across a range of key expert bodies of knowledge. With attention to Durkheim's founding study of suicide, as well as discourses within sociology, law, medicine, psy-knowledge and newsprint media, this book demonstrates that suicide cannot be understood without understanding how gender shapes it, and without giving explicit attention to the manner in which prevailing claims privilege some interpretations and experiences of suicide above others. Revealing the masculine and masculinist terms in which our current knowledge of suicide is constructed, The Gender of Suicide, explores the relationship between our grasp of suicide and problematic ideas connected to the body, agency, violence, race and sexuality. As such, it will appeal to sociologists and social theorists, as well as scholars of cultural studies, philosophy, law and psychology.
Drawing on more than 60 years of experience in the field of suicidology, Edwin S. Shneidman has compiled and reflected on the 13 most thought-provoking works on suicide from the 20th century. Serving a large audience, this volume will be of interest to those doing research, those helping prevent suicide through community intervention or clinical practice, and those who have been touched by suicide in some personal capacity.
The Oxford Texbook of Suicidology is the most comprehensive textbook on suicidology and suicide prevention that has ever been published. It is written by world-leading specialists and describes all aspects of suicidal behaviour and suicide prevention, including psychological, cultural, biological, and sociological factors.
In many countries of the world the number of persons that commit or attempt suicide has risen considerably over the past two decades. Particularly among young people suicide rates have increased dramatically, suicide now ranking as the second or third cause of death among them. The causes of this development have been questioned by health care workers, scientists and policy makers. Although much still remains unknown, it has become increasingly clear that one way in which a society affects the probability that an individual will die by his or her own hand is through the attitudes it adopts towards suicide. Modern society confronts people more and more often with attitudes and models, such as in the mass media, that express a permissive stance towards voluntary death in a variety of circumstances. Evidence suggest that imitation might indeed play a significant role in the frequency of suicide. A related aspect is the attitudes care givers entertain themselves towards suicide. This affects both the way in which they approach and treat individuals in suicidal crisis as well as the readiness of these individuals to look for professional help. The present volume presents an overview of important recent work on the influences of societal and care givers' attitudes on suicide as well provoking premature suicidal deaths.
