Suicide: “intentional” act of killing oneself? A review of nineteen theoretical arguments and fifty-eight definitions in seven natural languages

Abstract

Perhaps intentionality is the most problematic category in the definition of suicide, however there still seems to be no literature review of relevant theoretical arguments and main dictionaries of different languages. Given this situation, the general objective of this study was to understand how to treat the category of intentionality in the definition of suicide. A qualitative, quantitative, exploratory and bibliographic methodology was used. A narrative review based on 27 authors from different areas included 19 theoretical arguments, organized on a matrix. 7 arguments are applicable in defense of the thesis that suicide is intentional, another 7 to defend the opposite thesis that this phenomenon is not intentional and the remaining 5 apparently in favor of either of the two. Moving forward to an integrative review guided by 8 criteria, 58 definitions of noun and/or verb were extracted from 36 monolingual, digital dictionaries of Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, Italian, German and Russian. 72.22% of the selected dictionaries refer to suicide as intentional, and 27.78%, including all Portuguese ones, do not characterize it as such. In the first group, intentionality was referred mostly by lexical items equivalent to “intentional”, “voluntary” and “deliberate”, as well as adverbs based on them. The conclusion is that it is not feasible to include intentionality in the definition of suicide, because academic and lexicographic sources lack consensus. It is recommended to overcome the qualitative and quantitative limitations of this study, as well as to consult more than one definition of suicide and in different languages.