Resource Tag: HISTORICAL STUDIES

The long history of suicide as a criminal offence still has a significant contemporary effect on how it is perceived, conceptualised and adjudged. This is particularly the case within countries where suicide is largely determined within a coronial system, such as Australia, the UK and the US. This paper details the outcomes of a study […]

Importance:  Suicide rates among active-duty personnel in the US military have increased substantially since 2004, and numerous studies have attempted to contextualize and better understand this phenomenon. Placing contemporary examinations of suicides among active-duty personnel in the US Army in historical context provides opportunities for joint historical and epidemiological research to inform health care professionals […]

~

Offers factual information about suicide, providing a brief history, discussing risk factors and mental disorders, addressing young victims and the right to die, and exploring suicide as a weapon, experiences of people left behind, and prevention.

Since Morselli’s 1881 report, suicide rates have changed dramatically in some Italian areas whereas the rates have remained approximately the same in other regions. Italy has a long tradition in the study of suicide & now it is crucial to learn more about assessment & management of suicide risk. The author overviews the drama occurring […]

This review of historical research demonstrates there had been extensive studies of suicide preceding Durkheim, addressing not only the importance of social factors, but also those factors which are now subsumed in the medical model. It is asserted some of the earlier reviews can now be seen as more balanced & comprehensive than that of […]

~

~

The author presents a historical review of girls’ & women’s episodic & repetitive self-injury in the clinical literature from 1913 to the present. Moving from research studies which indicate that self-injury typically presents in females during adolescence, this article elucidates how self-injury may reflect girls’ developmental struggles within a patriarchal culture & embody a narrative […]

~

The book reviewed here is one that points to the fact that Durkheim’s study of suicide was only one of many important studies on this subject being done in the nineteenth century. The reviewer finds the book to be interesting & timely, especially as the psychiatric perspective today threatens to overtake the Durkheimian tradition. He […]

This chapter begins with a review of the sources used by Emile Durkheim to develop his theory of suicide. This is followed by an exploration of the early history of the stream analogy, the idea that suicide & homicide are linked. Various developments, criticisms, & reincarnations of the stream analogy are traced in the works […]

The authors explore the pre-Durkheim understanding of altruistic suicide. They find that suicide as self-sacrifice was described by early nineteenth-century authors before the delineation of altruism by the French philosopher & mathematician Auguste Comte. The concept evolved, leading to the categorization of altruistic suicide by Savage in England in 1892 & the elaboration of the […]

This column discusses the life & work of Enrico Morselli, a late nineteenth-century Italian psychiatrist, who wrote “Suicide. An Essay on Comparative Moral Statistics.” The theoretical basis of this pioneering work & its impact are described. (11 refs)

Published in “Suicide Risk & Protective Factors in the New Millennium,” ed. by O T Grad

File copy is best copy available.

This article analyzed the suicide rates of physicians in the United States from 1891-1903. The average rate was 41 with the highest rate occurring in 1893, identified by the author as a time of great financial depression. Competition within the profession, constant familiarity with death, & the stress of modern living are identified as reasons […]

This article discusses the recent case of a medical man whose death by prussic acid poisoning was ruled a suicide by a jury. The case gave rise to a discussion about the man’s mental state at the time of completing suicide, & the author uses this to explore both the historical & contemporary implications of […]

This article attempts to disprove the myth that suicide is primarily a White problem, by examining statistics & information concerning the suicide rates among Black urban populations. The author investigates the origin of this myth & discusses the history of suicide among Blacks. He also examines possible risk factors influencing suicidality in Black populations. The […]

This document reviews the book by D Vagero et al, which focuses on a unique archival find – the 1913 lost essay “Suicide as a Social Phenomenon,” by the well-known sociologist, P Sorokin. The reviewer recommends this book, & especially a reading of Sorokin’s essay itself, to every person interested in historical suicidology. He also […]

Examines David Hume’s essay on the morality of suicide as a starting point for contemporary debate about the morality of suicide, namely, the debate about whether some condition of life could present one with a morally acceptable reason for autonomously deciding to end one’s life. (17 refs)

Numerous studies have reported that suicide rates tend to be affected by temporal variables (month, day of the week, day of the month, holidays). Few authors have provided convincing explanations of these relations, & no one except Durkheim has suspected that they display similarities which indicate that they might have some causal origins in common. […]