Suicide through a Peacebuilding Lens

Katerina Standish

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9789811397363
• eBook ISBN:
  9789811397370
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Presents an empirical analysis of the six top journals in Peace and Conflict Studies for the past 15 years showcasing relevant content related to the suicide

Contributes a comprehensive summary of the phenomena of suicide in contemporary groups, in the ancient world and in modern demographic populations

Supplies a novel and distinct typology of suicide separating medical suicide and instrumental suicide

Illustrates the diversity of content and commentary surrounding life-ending acts to question how intention, motivation and intervention relate to suicide

Introduces readers to the conceptualization of acts of suicide as social, cultural and political forms of violence

Challenges assumptions that all acts of suicide are tragedies and offers an argument for suicide as an act of altruism in certain circumstances

Provides a commentary on the act of violence transformation and suicide

© The Author(s) 2020

K. StandishSuicide through a Peacebuilding Lens https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9737-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. The Suicide Gap

Katerina Standish¹

(1)

National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Katerina Standish

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Serendipity: finding something good without looking for it. (N.A.)

This exploration into suicide through a peacebuilding lens began when I decided I would attempt to create a hierarchy of harm for a unit I was teaching at the medical school at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. ¹ I knew the 3rd year med students were quite keen for stats and hard data (as opposed to narrative forms of research) and so I thought I would look at the world statistics on forms of violence and death and then present it to the students assigned to my class. I was, at the time, teaching a course called Social, Cultural and Political Violence to students who had six weeks, in four years, to consider the social sciences and/or humanities and I wanted to support them to recognize violence from an expansive platform—not just a punch at the bar but a process and outcome of dehumanization which takes myriad form. I am a scholar/practitioner of Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) and I was teaching into the University of Otago’s Medical Humanities programme when I decided to look a little closer at violence from a demographic viewpoint.

What I found was a nugget of information that stunned me: the leading cause of violent death worldwide was suicide. ² Not murder, or ‘terrorism’, not ethnic conflict, or child neglect, not domestic violence or forced deprivation but self-harming to the point of death. I knew the med students needed to consider rates of violence not merely incarnations of the same so I found a site that let you look at violence worldwide from either cause or context to entertain notions of ‘risk’ and ‘tendency’ from a population perspective. From this research, it became clear to me that the greatest threat to humans isn’t homicidal gun violence or home-grown radical ‘terrorists’ or even environmental hazards—it is the self. ³ Statistically speaking, the greatest threat to you—is you.

Originally set up to chart the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the University of Oxford compiles a meta-database of health indicators (https://​ourworldindata.​org/​about) to show global trends. The site is open source and the below ‘world’ graphic was the first analysis I looked at. ⁴ You will notice that among the top ten causes of death, there are two forms of non-medical death: road accidents and suicide. In this graphic, the first one I drew up on the website, there were roughly double the amount of road accidents to suicide. Considering I was intending to show my students a hierarchy of harm, not illness, I was looking for forms of intentional violence, not accidental death or death from disease (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

What the world dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

But when I did a country-by-country analysis, it became clear that it was suicides, not road accidents, that were the number one cause of violent death in many, many nations. As I was working at the University of Otago in New Zealand (a country with a suicide epidemic), ⁵ New Zealand was my first country pull (Fig. 1.2).

Fig. 1.2

What New Zealand dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

And I am Canadian, so my next pull was the country of my birth (Fig. 1.3).

Fig. 1.3

What Canada dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

The net went wider as I began to see this trend in the next chart (Fig. 1.4).

Fig. 1.4

What the USA dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

And it was not just in North America. It was in Russia too (Fig. 1.5).

Fig. 1.5

What Russia dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

And South Korea (Fig. 1.6),

Fig. 1.6

What South Korea dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

In Australia (Fig. 1.7),

Fig. 1.7

What Australia dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

And in European nations (Figs. 1.8, 1.9, 1.10, 1.11, 1.12, 1.13, and 1.14),

Fig. 1.8

What Germany dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.9

What Spain dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.10

What France dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.11

What Austria dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.12

What Switzerland dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.13

What the UK dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.14

What Ireland dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

And I am a PACS scholar so I decided to look at some so-called post-conflict nations such as Sri Lanka, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (Figs. 1.15, 1.16, and 1.17).

Fig. 1.15

What Sri Lanka dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.16

What Serbia dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.17

What Bosnia and Herzegovina dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

And even in huge nations such as India and China, where road accidents were listed higher than suicide, the rates of Suicide compared to Homicide, Conflict and Terrorism were staggering (Figs. 1.18 and 1.19).

Fig. 1.18

What India dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.19

What China dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

And in nations with religious inhibitions that dampen suicide stats and where underreporting of suicide is routine, suicide was still the leading cause of non-accidental violent death (Figs. 1.20, 1.21, 1.22, and 1.23).

Fig. 1.20

What Nigeria dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.21

What Indonesia dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.22

What Israel dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

Fig. 1.23

What the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia dies from 2016

(Source https://​ourworldindata.​org/​what-does-the-world-die-from)

There were dozens of countries with higher levels of road accidents to be sure, but all of the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. The Suicide Gap
• 2. Understandings of Suicide
• 3. Why Peace and Conflict Studies?
• 4. Medical Suicide
• 5. Instrumental Suicide
• 6. Social, Cultural and Political Violence
• 7. Intention, Motivation and Intervention
• 8. Why Not Suicide?
• 9. Peacebuilding Suicide
• Back Matter