Tales of Biographical Disintegration: how Parents Make Sense of Their Sons’ Suicides

This study of parents bereaved by their sons’ suicides drew on psychological autopsy data but used qualitative analytic methods. 14 semi-structured interviews were conducted. Some parents represented their sons as victims who were cruelly destroyed by external forces while others portrayed them as agents of their own destruction. Either way, their narratives were dominated by moral rather than medical categories & by questions of personal accountability. The authors also discuss how the parents used the interview to perform a complex reconstructive task. (47 refs.)