Suicide Scene Research Articles

Post-suicide Intervention Programs: A Systematic Review

The purposes of this study were: 1) to determine the effectiveness of suicide postvention programs on suicide attempts and suicide as well as grief symptoms, mental distress, and mental health broadly defined; and 2) to investigate their cost-effectiveness. Computerized database searches (PubMed, PsycINFO, Cinahl, Cochrane Database, Crisis and Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior) were performed in September 2009 to obtain evaluations of suicide postvention programs and in February 2010 (Centre for Research and Dissemination Database, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, PubMed, PsycINFO, and Cinahl) to obtain cost-effectiveness analyses of bereavement programs. Hand searches of relevant articles and reviews were also conducted. Publications were included in the analysis if they described an evaluation/cost-effectiveness analysis of a suicide postvention program, provided data, and were published in English-language peer-reviewed journals. There was no restriction on publication date. Studies were excluded if they were narrative systematic reviews or dissertations or if they described a postvention program but provided no evaluation. Because very few cost-effectiveness analyses were identified, articles describing "costs" of bereavement programs were also included. Studies were evaluated for quality using Centres for Evidence-Based Medicine Levels of Evidence, and for program effectiveness using Office of Justice Programs "What Works Repository" Analytic Framework. Of the 49 studies of suicide postvention programs retrieved, 16 met inclusion criteria for evaluation of study quality and evidence of effectiveness. Three target populations for postvention programs were identified: school-based, family-focused, and community-based. No protective effect of any postvention program could be determined for number of suicide deaths or suicide attempts from the available studies. Few positive effects of school-based postvention programs were found. One study reported negative effects of a suicide postvention. Gatekeeper training for proactive postvention was effective in increasing knowledge pertaining to crisis intervention among school personnel. Outreach at the scene of suicide was found to be helpful in encouraging survivors to attend a support group at a crisis centre and seek help in dealing with their loss. Contact with a counseling postvention for familial survivors (spouses, parents, children) of suicide generally helped reduce psychological distress in the short term. There was no statistical analysis of community-based suicide postvention programs; however media guidelines for reporting of suicide and suicide attempts have been adopted by mental health organizations in numerous countries. No analyses of cost-effectiveness of suicide postvention programs were found. Recommendations to provide guidance to policy-makers, administrators and clinicians are presented and directions for future research are outlined.

The Identity and Significance of “Achilles” in Dostoevskij's Prestuplenie i Nakazanie

This article examines the identity and significance of the figure named Achilles from the scene of Svidrigajlov's suicide in Dostoevskii's Crime and Punishment by establishing and closely re-reading the broader contexts – namely, Book XXII of The Iliad as well as Part VI of Crime and Punishment. The article shows that the suicide scene, disguised as a single combat between Achilles and Hector, reflects the inner struggle between the divided selves of Raskol'nikov on the subconscious level. Dostoevskii's use of the classical motif is interpreted to suggest the influence of a fatal force on the novel's main characters.

Ancient Drama Illuminated by Contemporary Stagecraft: Some Thoughts on the Use of Mask and Ekkyklema in Ariane Mnouchkine's Le Dernier Caravansérail and Sophocles' Ajax

Ancient Drama Illuminated By Contemporary Stagecraft:Some Thoughts on the Use of Mask and Ekkyklēma in Ariane Mnouchkine's Le Dernier CaravansÉrail and Sophocles' Ajax Peter W. Meineck In July 2005, the Lincoln Center Festival presented Théâtre du Soleil's epic production of Le Dernier Caravansérail, a six-hour performance divided into two parts that articulated the plight of contemporary refugees from predominantly Muslim countries and their attempts to seek refuge in the West. Conceived and created by the French auteur Ariane Mnouchkine, the production split audiences, critics, and commentators. 1 Always controversial, Mnouchkine's bold theatricality and collaborative creative process with her metamorphic Théâtre du Soleil brought a work to New York with a sweeping sense of on-stage dynamics, scenic movement, and visual dexterity that evoked Athenian staging devices of the fifth century b.c.e. and created astute parallels between the ancient and modern stage. Focusing on the use of the mask and the ekkyklēma in the suicide scene of Sophocles' Ajax, I will discuss the ways in which an understanding of the creative process of a contemporary dramatist such as Mnouchkine offers another paradigm for the comprehension of ancient texts. Mnouchkine's connection to the dramatic form of ancient Greece seems, at first sight, to be marked. In 1992 the Brooklyn Academy of Music [End Page 453] presented her version of the myth of the House of Atreus, Les Atrides, where Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis was staged prior to the three parts of Aeschylus' Oresteia. Rehearsed and refined over several years, Les Atrides ran for over ten hours in the non-traditional space provided by the vast Park Slope Armory in Brooklyn. But Mnouchkine's method was not a recreation of Greek tragic theatre or even an updating to accommodate a contemporary audience; rather, it was a theatrical attempt to discern the nature of one of the great foundation myths of the West and to extrapolate the meaning of the myth as it relates to modern political and social institutions. In a 1990 interview, when Mnouchkine was asked if she drew inspiration from Greek theatre space, she responded, "Not at all! First of all, I wasn't familiar with it, and didn't want to be. I prefer to work by confirmation, to have my work confirmed by documents after the event." 2 Mnouchkine adopted an approach to Greek tragedy that was markedly Brechtian, a process of verfremdung (defamiliarisation), utilizing the dramatic styles of Asian theatre. In the case of Les Atrides, she adapted the Indian Kathakali tradition, which deeply infused the production's impressive choral work. Yet Mnouchkine believed that total alienation was a misnomer; her version of Greek tragedy must not become self-reflective or derisive, or use aesthetic realism to "sterilize" the imagination of the audience. In "translating" the techniques of Asian theatre to distance her audience from their preconceived notions of Greek drama, Mnouchkine may have brought us closer to an understanding of staging ancient theatre in her use of masks, scenic devices, stage machinery, choral delivery, and physical acting techniques. 3 Théâtre du Soleil's intensive work in Kabuki, Kathakali, and Commedia (whose origin she also sees in the East) has been influenced by the physical theatre movement encapsulated by artists such as Jacques Lecoq and the expression of the mythic elements of drama inspired by directors like Peter Brook. These elements, combined with a refashioning of some of the fundamental staging traditions inherent in Eastern theatre, have infused Mnouchkine's work with a mise en scene that not only transports her own drama but also can help form a greater appreciation of similar theatrical devices employed by the Athenians. After all, Greek drama was created, first and foremost, as a performative craft; any subsequent [End Page 454] life as a written text was a secondary effect of the presentation of the drama to a live audience in the theatre at one given time and place. With this in mind, what can Le Dernier Caravansérail reveal about a play such as Sophocles' Ajax? Ajax is a good choice for this discussion because the staging issues of the play continue to confound. 4 Ajax...

What to do with a Corpse?: Physical Reality and the Fictional World in the Shakespearean Theatre

In the Shakespearean theatre, the removal of dead bodies from the stage was a theatrical necessity, owing to the absence of a curtain between the stage and the auditorium. Despite the many non-realistic conventions accepted in the theatre, the disposal of corpses had to be carried out in such a way as not to disrupt the reality of the fictional world. An analysis of certain kinds of intriguing situations, such as suicide scenes, reveals how efficiently Shakespeare and his contemporaries utilized the stage hangings, the upper gallery, and the stage trap so as to avoid the necessity of bringing on bearers for the corpses at the ends of the scenes. Only at the end of the play, when the logic of the fictional world stops functioning, could the spectacle of a corpse getting up and leaving the stage have been accepted by the audience.

Suicide Scenes in Latin Psalters of the Thirteenth Century as Reflection of Jewish Midrashic Exposition

Interpretation de l'initiale D historiee du Psaume 52 Vulgate (53 hebreu) dont le verset 2 parle de l'insense. Une serie de Psautiers d'Angleterre a represente l'insense comme un personnage en train de se suicider (ici avec une epee). Le theme existe dans le christianisme, mais parmi beaucoup d'autres symboles de l'insense | aussi, la source doit etre ici le midrash du Psaume 14 (hebreu | 13 dans la Vulgate) qui est un doublet du Psaume 53

The Comic Structures of Tragic Endings: The Suicide Scenes in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra

J N TRAGEDIES OF LOVE, AS DISTINCT FROM TRAGEDIES in which love is made subordinate to revenge, ambition, or some other emotion, the two lovers theoretically have equal claims on the role normally reserved for a single protagonist. In the Shakespeare canon this equal claim is signaled by the title: Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and, if one wishes to include a play that is not generically a tragedy. Troilus and Cressida. Although love tragedy, broadly defined, was eventually to become a popular form on the Jacobean stage, the genre was a new one when Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in 1594 or 1595. As Clifford Leech observes, until Romeo and Juliet appeared, love on the public stage seems to have been solely an element in comedy or in those romantic plays which Sidney mocked in his Apology for Poetry.In choosing the well-known Romeo and Juliet legend for his first tragedy of love, Shakespeare either stumbled upon or deliberately sought out a solution to the major problem inherent in the two-protagonist tragedy: that of orchestrating an ending in which two characters separately yet jointly undergo tragic downfalls and deaths. What particularly interests me about the pattern of events with which Romeo and Juliet ends is that Shakesneare used it again, several vears later, in Antonv and Cleopatra. Both love tragedies conclude with a tragic sequence consisting of the feigned death of the heroine, followed bv the suicide of the lover, then the heroine's resurrection, and finally, a second suicide. This pattern confers upon each of the four title characters a role characteristic of the tragic protagonist-that of causing the death of another. Each lover indirectly and inadvertently brings about the death of the beloved, and each dies nobly by his or her own hand, believing that death is preferable to life without the beloved.