(Social) Death is not the end: resisting social exclusion due to suicide

Abstract

In most studies on those bereaved by suicide – depicted in this article as ‘suicide survivors’ – the social stigma of suicide results in two options for survivors: to suffer ostracism or downplay public mention of the loss, thereby contributing to the deceased's social exclusion. I suggest a third alternative – that of contesting the social death inflicted upon both the deceased and their survivors. Various qualitative methods were used to analyse Path to Life, an Israeli association founded by bereaved families striving to redress the segregation of people who committed suicide and those who survive them. The activists use a seemingly paradoxical strategy, by which they seek to place the cause of their social death in the limelight. Through their efforts to reframe suicide from a taboo to a widespread problem deserving recognition, the organisation's activists present the deceased and their survivors as entitled to consideration and support. The proposed analysis is based on frame analysis of ‘alternative death entrepreneurs’ promoting unconventional perceptions and practices concerning suicide. The case study illuminates a subject seldom investigated – efforts to transform social death.