Mass Suicide Research Articles

Beyond the Spectacular

AbstractThe aim of this essay is to interrogate gender relations in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency in a way that recognizes continuities as well as discontinuities across multiple dimensions of social relations. The essay begins by outlining the changing trajectory of the Boko Haram insurgency and scholarly efforts to understand it as a social phenomenon. The second section discusses how research and media recognition of Boko Haram’s violence in relation to women led to a focus on spectacular events, such as mass abductions and suicide bombings. It is critical to recognize the politics of visibility and nonvisibility regarding women in the gendered dynamics set in motion by Boko Haram’s spectacles of violence. Finally, the essay points to ways in which feminist analyses of conflict and militarism throw light on the more suppressed yet critical dimensions of gender relations that surface in the wake of the Boko Haram insurgency.

What justification is there for including the mass suicide of Jonestown as part of a Guyana dark tourism narrative in 2025?

PurposeThe Jonestown massacre of 1978 was the largest such event in modern history; it assumes the status of a prototype in many discussions of cult dynamics and mass suicide. This paper aims to make the case that Jonestown should be memorialised and made into a dark tourism attraction.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is principally the outcome of secondary research conducted over a number of years on the theme of dark tourism. The paper also benefited from direct interviews and conversations with political and ex-military personnel in Guyana who were in some way involved with Jonestown.FindingsThe research establishes that Jonestown remains a matter of great sensitivity and even national embarrassment, with many in the tourism sector reluctant to highlight what they regard as a very negative association, in the market, of Guyana with Jonestown and Jonestown only.Practical implicationsExpressed in context, the paper discusses the place of Jonestown in dark tourism and proposes an operational formula by which the semiotic of Jonestown, as contained in the tourist narrative, transforms tourism into catharsis.Originality/valueFor the author, Jonestown is tourism-imperative because not much longer after that apocalyptic event, the “Jonestown massacre” became a reference in the discourse on dark tourism. Jonestown is too large and archetypal an event to escape research and discussion of its place in the realm of dark tourism. This paper therefore explores, from both theoretical and policy perspectives, the ways in which the narratives of dark tourism can serve to expiate guilt by confronting it and therefore still deserve a place in the tourism imaginary of 2025. As such, the paper should be of value to not only scholars and researchers but also those engaged in tourism planning and destination management.

Berardi, Franco ‘Bifo.’ Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide. London: Verso, 2015. 224 pp. ISBN: 9781781685785. £10.99.


 
 
 Berardi’s Heroes (2015) analyses the intricate relationship between capitalism and mental health by exploring the proliferation of mass murder and suicide in the twentieth-first century. This book is not essential to achieve a better understanding of Berardi’s theoretical edifice as a philosopher. Instead, Heroes offers a great application of his theoretical concepts on contemporary events, exhibiting how philosophy can be applied to contingent historical issues such as the ones dealt with in the book.
 
 

Identifying Potential Mass Shooters and Suicide Terrorists With Warning Signs of Suicide, Perceived Victimization, and Desires for Attention or Fame

ABSTRACTIn the United States and Europe, the distinction between public mass shooters and suicide terrorists no longer seems particularly meaningful. A number of public mass shooters have considered using bombs and claimed to be sacrificing themselves for an ideological cause, and many suicide terrorists have attacked without organizational support, using firearms, for what appear to be largely personal reasons. Previous research has also documented several common factors in these offenders’ lives, including (a) suicidal motives and life indifference, (b) perceived victimization, and (c) desires for attention or fame. These factors are not always easy for observers to recognize in advance, so mental health professionals, the public, and law enforcement officials might need help from experts to more successfully identify at-risk individuals. This article reviews the evidence of each factor, provides a list of specific warning signs, and offers recommendations for future research. Ultimately, an evidence-based approach to prevention could help save both the lives of many potential victims and the lives of the would-be attackers themselves.

Association of Body Mass Index with Suicide Behaviors, Perceived Stress, and Life Dissatisfaction in the Korean General Population.

ObjectiveThe purpose of the present study was to investigate the association between Body Mass Index, suicide, perceived stress, and life dissatisfaction in a general population sample of Korean adults. MethodsA total of 6,022 nationally representative adults aged 18 to 74 were selected using a multistage cross-sectional cluster sampling method. Questionnaires regarding suicide behaviors, perceived stress, and life satisfaction were completed by the participants. They also reported their heights and weights, which were used to calculate BMI. Psychiatric disorders were diagnosed according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, using the Korean version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. ResultsThe results showed that being underweight was associated with higher risk for suicide ideation [odds ratio (OR), 1.6; 95% confidence interval (Cl), 1.18–2.05] and suicide attempt (OR, 2.0, 95% Cl, 1.23–3.31). Likewise, obesity also increased the risk of suicide ideation (OR, 1.3; 95% Cl, 1.11–1.56) although not suicide attempt. Furthermore, underweight individuals were more likely to report severe level of perceived stress (OR, 1.7; 95% Cl, 1.26–2.17) and life dissatisfaction (OR, 1.3; 95% Cl, 1.07–1.68). All of the results remained significant after adjusting for age, gender, education, and psychiatric illnesses. ConclusionThis study found that being underweight is a significant risk factor for suicide and poor subjective wellbeing in Korea. It suggests that BMI status may be an important modifiable factor for improving mental health in Korea.

Dying for your group or for your faith? On the power of belief.

Whitehouse's theory offers one plausible pathway toward extreme self-sacrifice, but it fails to explain sacrificial acts that are inspired by heartfelt ideological beliefs, including jihadi terrorism and mass suicide in cults. If he wants to offer a "single overarching theory" of self-sacrifice, he will need to take seriously the power of belief.

ВСЕМИРНАЯ ЭСХАТОЛОГИЯ В РОМАНЕ Ч.Т. АЙТМАТОВА «ТАВРО КАССАНДРЫ»

World eschatology in Aitmatov’s late fiction “Cassandra’s Brand” (1996) addresses the problem of death expectation of mankind at the genetic level in the context of a worldwide catastrophe. In this case writer’s transition to rationalistic eschatology acting within the framework of secular culture, anthropogenic factors and science-like phenomena, is of great interest along with mythological and Abrahamic eschatology. First of all, it is necessary to distinguish the motive of dystopia through analyzing similar features of eschatology, dystopia (and futurology) as specific forms of attitude to the mode of future, and to disсern traditional features of this literary genre as well. For example, a geneticist from space, who calls himself as a space monk, is perceived by society as the antichrist, attempting a sacrilege against the sacrament of procreation and the divine commandment “Be fruitful and multiply”; an undesirable brand on the pregnant women’s forehead is considered as a mark of the beast, since laser exposure in folk culture is perceived as an ability to control people’s psyche and soul. In the background, the novel illustrates the dystopia model of a technocratic state in which inhuman experiments in creating an artificial human, lynching, mass wars and murders occur. Further, the motive of the “noosphere” is considered, which interprets the genesis of world eschatology as world’s harmony destruction and division of the world mind into the antinomy of space and chaos, where the first epitomizes the natural beginning of nature and animals, meanwhile the chaos is relating to social destructive actions. The impossibility of constructing a noospheric, cosmopolitan consciousness assumes its evolutionary completion, the end of the world, according to Aitmatov. Aitmatov’s world-building in his novel largely resembles the theories of Teilhard de Chardin, Nikolai Fedorov, Vladimir Vernadsky. In the end, the final image of world eschatology is devoted to the motive of the universal death, endangering both human existence and all nature, the cosmic universe as a whole. In the novel for the first time, besides the suicide of the protagonist, Aitmatov describes the mass suicide of whales, as radars of cosmic intelligence, predicting the world’s catastrophe. The aspect of the forced death of a prophet-man as a potential death for society is also analyzed Abstracts. World eschatology in Aitmatov’s late fiction “Cassandra’s Brand” (1996) addresses the problem of death expectation of mankind at the genetic level in the context of a worldwide catastrophe. In this case, of great interest is the writer’s transition, along with mythological and Abrahamic eschatology, to rationalistic eschatology, which acts within the framework of secular culture, anthropogenic factors and science-like phenomena.

Group Therapy or Mass Suicide? The Sharing of Cellular Damage Between Members of a Bacterial Community.

Group Therapy or Mass Suicide? The Sharing of Cellular Damage Between Members of a Bacterial Community.

More than Meets the Eye: Incongruity and Observation in Josephus’s Account of the Triumph of Vespasian and Titus

More than Meets the Eye: Incongruity and Observation in Josephus’s Account of the Triumph of Vespasian and Titus

Between the plot and plantation: Parahuman ecologies in Fred D’Aguiar’s Children of Paradise

In this article I argue that Children of Paradise (2014), Fred D’Aguiar’s novelization of the final months of Jonestown, draws different spatializations of political oppression together and situates critique and resistance to that oppression in a parahuman ecology, a concept that develops out of a combination of vital materialist discourse and the writings of Wilson Harris and Édouard Glissant. Jonestown is the name popularly given to the Peoples Temple, an American cult led by Jim Jones that ended in a horrific mass suicide event in the Guyanese rainforest in 1978. Unlike previous narratives and studies on the group, the Jonestown of Children of Paradise takes on the contours of the Caribbean plantation and plot in its obsessive and oppressive control over the lives and labours of its population and its narrative of liberation from and resistance to external forces. Critique and resistance to these power structures emerge at the intersection of politics and ecology to produce an ecologically-inflected parahuman community. This community is represented in particular by the unusually compassionate relationship that develops between Adam, a silverback gorilla caged at the centre of Jonestown’s commune space, and Trina, a young girl who lives in the commune with her mother. As Adam and Trina engage each other and their relationship with the rainforest more intensely, they create a potentially alternative mode of living for those wishing to escape the confines of the commune and, symbolically, the horrors of the plantation.

Metaphorical Re-Framing as “Equipment for Living”: Confronting Death with Exuberance in the Exit Interviews of Heaven’s Gate Followers

“Cults” offer an opportunity to study religiously-associated actors who understand death very differently than mainstream faith communities. Here, we consider Heaven’s Gate members’ “exit statements,” recorded before the mass suicide that they believed was the next step for spiritual advancement. We pair Terror Management Theory (TMT), which investigates factors affecting anxiety toward death, with Burkean analyses of metaphor and equipment for living. We suggest that these statements’ metaphorical frames (including mass suicide as graduation and bodies as mere vehicles to be transcended) serve as strategies to decrease anxiety and fear surrounding death generally, but particularly of death by mass suicide.

Le retour des ancêtres royaux suicidés : une histoire régressive malgache

Since 1990, a royal possession cult has been spreading to the cities and villages of a sacred kingship in the Northern Madagascar. This religious tradition is based on narratives relating how some royal ancestors preferred mass suicide by drowning rather than submit to the yoke of the Malagasy pre-colonial Empire in the 19th century. Today, these royal spirits possess some constituents of this kingdom as well as Malagasy and Comorians migrants who settled down in the province during the 20th century. When taking control of people’s minds and bodies, these spirits ask for transforming the different places of their drowning into sacred sites. Royal and common dignitaries use this religious tradition for defending their land tenure rights and claiming their autochthony against the postcolonial Malagasy State, migrants, reformist religious movements, and multinational firms establishing on their lands. Each year, more than 5000 people participate to this possession cult, re-enacting and performing the way these royal ancestors committed suicide into the sea. State officials, Secretaries and mass media attend to this event and are taught about this religious tradition. But my fieldwork and historiographical survey demonstrated several facts which are antithetical to this official version: this tragic event took place in the 17th century, these royal ancestors tried to escape from their aggressive kin before funding this kingdom, this dynastic branch was drowned into a coastal area which never belonged to its territory, and this religious tradition has been introduced into the kingdom in the 20th century by Malagasy migrants and descendants of slaves affiliated to a neighboring divine kingship. How should we deal with these two antithetical narratives?

The Quadratic Relationship Between Body Mass Index and Suicide Ideation: A Nonlinear Analysis of Indirect Effects.

A nonlinear indirect effects framework was used to investigate potential interpersonal indirect effects (i.e., perceived burden and thwarted belonging) accounting for the nonlinear relationship between body mass index (BMI) and suicide ideation. Using a sample of 338 undergraduates, results revealed a significant quadratic effect of BMI on suicide ideation via perceived burden only, which became significant as BMI fell below 18.00kg/m2 and above 28.00kg/m2 . Our results provide novel information relevant for suicide risk screening in the context of weight- and health-related interventions and provide justification for future longitudinal trials assessing suicide risk across the BMI spectrum.

Body mass index and suicide methods

Overweight and obesity is associated with lower rates of suicide. However, little is known about the association with different suicide methods. We studied the association between groups of body mass index and suicide methods. We identified all medicolegal autopsy cases with a cause of death due to external causes in Sweden during 1999–2013 (N = 39,368) and included 11,715 suicides and 13,316 accidents or homicides as controls. We applied multinomial regression models adjusted for age, sex, year and season of death. Obesity was associated with suicidal intoxication, OR 1.15 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.02, 1.30] and negatively associated with all other suicide methods studied. Underweight showed a negative association with suicidal drowning and there was an indication towards a negative association with hanging in men OR 0.81 (95% CI 0.65, 1.01). We conclude that body mass index (BMI) is associated with the choice of suicide method. This may be of importance in a public health perspective, e.g. potential for prevention of intoxications. In the practice of forensic medicine, the physician's level of suspicion may rise if the apparent suicidal method is less common for the individual characteristics of the deceased, such as BMI.

The Ethos of Masada in Halakhic Literature

Josephus Flavius is the only source on the rebellion of Masada and the heroic mass suicide at its end. This tragic event was not mentioned in the Halakhic literature. Chazal, rabbinic sages, who lived at that time, didn’t mention it and one should wonder why. The common explanation is that Chazal were against committing suicide and did not want to raise the issue in a heroic context. However, thorough review of the rabbinic literature shows that Chazal did not have a problem with suicide. It all depended on the reason: suicide for religious principle was considered a positive and heroic act. But suicide due to a national principle was considered a negative act that shouldn’t be mentioned. That is why the events of Masada and Gamla are not mentioned in Chazal’s literature. This conception of ignoring the event of Masada in the Halakhic literature even in discussions about committing suicide has changed in the twentieth century.

МЕЧІ У НИХ НЕ МЕНШІ, НІЖ ДРОТИКИ В ІНШИХ НАРОДІВ, А НАКОНЕЧНИКИ ДРОТИКІВ БІЛЬШІ, НІЖ МЕЧІ”: КЕЛЬТСЬКА ЗБРОЯ У ГРЕКО-РИМСЬКІЙ ІКОНОГРАФІЇ ТА ІСТОРІОГРАФІЇ

The studies on the Iron Age Celtic warfare usually tend to put together three types of data: Greek and Roman literary sources, iconographic artefacts as well as the archaeological materials. In reality, we have at least two different images of the Celtic warfare. The Classical historians and artisans who pursued some political aims describing the Celtic warriors had constructed the first one. Another one had been created by the Celts themselves, who practiced their burial rite in accordance with the Iron Age religious beliefs. While the “real” Celtic warfare can hardly be reconstructed, the author focuses on the comparison of the two “ideal” images just outlined. According to the Classical sources, dozens of thousands of the Celtic warriors had attacked the civilized nations. In case of victory, the Celts used to cut off heads of their vanquished enemies and made mass suicides in case of their own defeat. They went into battle naked to demonstrate their rage and fearlessness, but they were unable to countervail the light infantry armed with missiles. The Celtic weapons had been huge, but poorly made. While the archaeology attests the usage of war chariots by the Celts, the Greek historiographers avoided to mention this type of military equipment for it had been considered an attribute of gods and epic heroes. While the Celtic war-bands were usually described as the disordered hordes, some passing remarks by Livy and Caesar give reason to suggest that the Celtic infantry was versatile enough to fight in both close formation and open order. The image of the Celts as the nomadic warrior people seems to be no more than the historiographic cliché. Recent strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of the La Tène cemeteries suggests that only a small part of the community took part in the population movements. The Greek and Roman artists embodied the above-mentioned stereotypes in their works. They used to depict the Celts as the men with athletic figures, specific “barbarian” haircuts and the moustache. Typical Celtic warrior in the Greek and Roman iconography had been depicted as the naked infantryman, armed with the sword and the shield, who stood against either the fully armed hoplite or cavalryman. The artists rarely reproduced the authentic appearance of the Celtic weapons, with exception of the oval shields and sword-belts, which were considered as the ethnographic markers of the Celts. The author argues that while the Celtic military equipment fitted mainly for the hand-to-hand clashes, the findings of the javelins in the La Tène burials are far from being seldom. Similarly, large amount of the fibulae in the male graves may indicate that the nudity in combat was exotic custom not only for the Greeks and Romans, but also for the Celts themselves. Judging from the archaeological finds, the typical Celtic warrior was an infantryman armed with a single multipurpose spear and an oval shield. The sword was an elite weapon of the chieftains, high-ranked warriors, equestrians etc. Special attention in the article is paid to the nomenclature of the Celtic weapons used in the Classical sources. The author comes to a conclusion that the words of the Celtic origin gaesum and matara (mandaris) widely used by the Greek and Roman authors originally referred to the multipurpose spear designed for the hand-to-hand fight. While the Greeks used a specific term thureos to define the Celtic shield, the Romans used the word scutum for both their own semi-cylindrical composite rectangular shield and the simply constructed Celtic oval shield. Similarly, both Greeks and Romans had not developed a specific term to define the Celtic long slashing sword, although the swords used by the Greeks and Romans themselves differed significantly from their Celtic counterparts.

Murder-suicide: bridging the gap between mass murder, amok, and suicide

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on mass murder and amok, and the relationship of these phenomena to murder-suicide as well as to determine future research directions. Design/methodology/approach – Research literature on mass murder, amok, and murder-suicide was reviewed in the context of recent developments in the understanding of suicide, aggressive behavior, and psychiatric diagnostics. Findings – Amok, typically viewed as a culture-bound disorder, occurs throughout the world and is best characterized as mass murder, similar to school shootings. Additionally, the phenomenon of mass murder may be best understood as a form of murder-suicide, related to the phenomenon of suicide-by-cop. Originality/value – This paper provides a review of the literature on murder-suicide, mass murder, and amok spanning over 110 years in the context of modern psychological research, new insights into the possible motivations of those who “run amok” and commit mass murder and provides future research directions for this important phenomenon.

Women as Martyrs: Mass Suicides at Thoa Khalsa During the Partition of India

The paper is an attempt at understanding the mass suicides committed by women during the communal riots instigated by the partition of the Indian subcontinent. Firstly, the position and the role assigned to women are investigated by applying Giorgio Agamben’s concept of bios and zoē within a gendered perspective; this forms the introductory theoretical framework of the topic. The core part of the paper concentrates on one significant event which took place in the village of Thoa Khalsa, Rawalpindi district in March 1947, where ninety women took their own lives as a desperate attempt to avoid rape, abduction and religious conversion, thereby averting the ruination of their community’s honour. Bhisham Sahni’s depiction of the episode in his semi-autobiographic novel, Tamas , along with testimonies and print media sources, allows for exploration of the notion of national and religious honour and more importantly whether the suicides were a decision made by a person actively responsible for her own fate or rather someone passively succumbing to the patriarchal expectations of the state and community.

Islamic micro finance: tool for economic stability and social change

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the benefits of starting Islamic microfinance (IMF) in India and the core concepts of IMF. Design/methodology/approach – Methodology of the paper is exploratory in nature and analysing of a new concept for implementation. Findings – The brief findings have been that Indian masses, especially the poor minority community and lower middle class, are in a pathetic situation financially, as per survey analysis. IMF can play a very critical role in providing deliverance from financial slavery. Research limitations/implications – Limitations of the paper have been that the survey was done in a limited area and within a particular community and financial background. Practical implications – Research finding of the paper demonstrates a practical roadmap or a blueprint on the need of starting IMF in India. Social implications – Social implications of the paper are that if the research findings are implemented and IMF were to be offered in India, the mass suicides committed specially by the Indian farmers can be contained to a great extent and can be virtually stopped. Originality/value – The paper is original in concept, as IMF is totally new to the Indian scenario, and the paper is of high value for regulators to seriously think on initiating the IMF machinery in India for the benefit of all Indians.

Body mass index and suicide.

It has been suggested that there is a connection between depression and an increased body mass index (BMI). As depression is related to suicide, a South Australian cohort study was performed to test whether a high BMI may also characterize victims of suicide. Body mass indexes from 100 consecutive cases of suicide (male-to-female ratio, 1:1) taken from the files of Forensic Science South Australia in Adelaide, Australia, were compared with BMIs from 100 sex- and age-matched control cases, where deaths were due to accidents, homicides, or natural diseases. No significant differences in BMIs and BMI categories were found between the 2 groups. However, when cases were subclassified according to the method used, BMIs were noted to be considerably lower in hangings than in both the control group as well as in victims who died of alternative means of suicide (P < 0.001). An association between an increased BMI and suicide could not be substantiated in this local study. However, the reasons for the decreased BMIs in hangings require further consideration that may assist in understanding more about particular victim subgroups.