The Unjustified Emotions: Child Suicide in Finnish Psychiatry from the 1930s until the 1970s

Abstract

This article examines the psychiatric discourse on child suicide in Finland from the 1930s until the 1970s. The studies on suicides committed by children reflect a clear change in the psychiatric notion of normalcy as well as in the predominant social attitudes of the era. The changes in the conception of child suicide, it is argued, were due to transformations in how the emotional lives of children have been understood in the society in general. Child psychiatry has, therefore, played a dual role as the producer of knowledge and as the mirror reflecting the changing social understanding of a complex and taboo subject.