The Social Production of Psychocentric Knowledge in Suicidology

Abstract

ABSTRACT Suicidology, the scientific study of suicide and suicide prevention, constructs suicide as primarily a question of individual mental health. Despite recent engagement with suicide from a broader public health perspective, and efforts of critical suicide studies scholars and activists to widen the disciplinary and theoretical base of suicidology, the narrow focus on individual pathology and deficit in conceptualising suicide persists. In this article, I consider the ways in which this ‘psychocentric’ knowledge of suicide is produced and organised, offer reasons why this to be problematic, and outline other available forms of knowledge production. This knowledge production is psychopolitical rather than psychocentric and emphasises much more the contexts (political, economic, social, cultural and historical) within which suicide occurs. Psychopolitical analysis aims to better understand the complex social and political contexts of such deaths, and, ultimately, seeks to open up collective and political possibilities for action which are denied when suicide is conceptualised solely as an issue of individual mental health.