Structuring Roles and Gender Identities Within Families Explaining Suicidal Behavior in South India
Abstract
Abstract.Background: This paper examines the social structures, culture, gendered roles, and their implications for suicidal behavior in South India. Exploring the cultural process within the structures of family and society to understand suicide and attempted suicide from the perspectives of survivors, mental health professionals, and traditional healers has not been achieved in the existing suicide-related research studies conducted in India to date. Aims: This study aimed to explore the cultural implications of attempted suicide by examining the survivors' life stories, their perceptions, and service providers’ interpretations of problem situation. Method: A qualitative design was used drawing on constant comparison method and thematic analysis. The analysis was underpinned by the theoretical concepts of Bourdieu's work. In-depth interviews were conducted with 15 survivors of attempted suicide, eight mental health professionals, and eight traditional healers from Southern India. Results: The study found interactions among visible and invisible fields such as faith, power, control, culture, family, religion, and social systems to have strengthened the disparities in gender and role structures within families and societies and to have impacted survivors’ dispositions to situations. Conclusion: The role of culture in causing suicide and attempted suicide is explained by unraveling the negative impact of interacting cultural and structural mechanisms.
References
1986). Suicide attempts and suicides in India. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 32, 64–73.
(2012). The relationship between menstrual cycle phases and suicide attempts in suicidal women admitted to the poisoning ward of Farshchian Hospital, Hamedan, Iran. Iranian Journal of Toxicology, 5, 531–534.
(1995). A pragmatic view of thematic analysis. The Qualitative Report, 2, 1–3.
(1994).
(Structures, habitus, power: Basis for a theory of symbolic power . In N. B. DirksG. EleyS. B. OrtnerEds., Culture/power/history: A reader in contemporary social theory (pp. 155–199). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.1996). Understanding. Theory, Culture & Society, 13, 17–37.
(1999). The weight of the world: Social suffering in contemporary society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
(2000). Pascalian meditations. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
(1994).
(Doxa and the common life: An interview . In S. ŽižekEd., Mapping ideology. London, UK: Verso.2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3, 77–101.
(2001). Suicide in women. International Clinical Psychopharmacology, 16, S7–S19.
(1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of"sex." New York, NY: Routledge.
(2013). Suicide and culture: Understanding the context. Cambridge, MA: Hogrefe Publishing.
. (1942). Basics of qualitative research (3rd ed). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
(2009). Menstruation and suicide. A histopathological study. Crisis, 30, 202–207.
(2000).
(The only generalization is: There is nogeneralization . In R. GommM. HammersleyP. FosterEds., Case study method (pp. 27–45). London, UK: Sage. 10.4135/97808570243672007). Perceptions about suicide: A qualitative study from southern India. National Medical Journal of India, 20, 176–179.
(2010). Risk factors for suicide in rural south India. British Journal of Psychiatry, 196, 26–30.
(2008). Why women attempt suicide: The role of mental illness and social disadvantage in a community cohort study in India. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 62, 817–822.
(2013). Suicide in the absence ofmental disorder? A review of psychological autopsy studies across countries. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 59, 545–554.
(1994). Status and sacredness: A general theory of status relations and an analysis of Indian culture. New York, NY: Oxford UniversityPress.
(2012). Prevalence and social determinants of suicidal behaviours among college youth in India. International Journalof Social Psychiatry, 58, 393–399.
(2012). Accidental deaths and suicides in India. New Delhi, India: Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
. (2014). Accidental deaths and suicides in India. New Delhi, India: Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
. (2005). Poverty, gender and mental health promotion in a global society. Promotion & Education, 12, 26–29.
(2007). Alcohol use and mental health in developing countries. Annals of Epidemiology, 17, S87–S92.
(2012). Suicide mortality in India: A nationally representative survey. The Lancet, 379, 2343–2351.
. (1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods. Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage Publications.
(2012). Suicide: An Indian perspective. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 54, 304–319.
(1978). Some aspects of psychiatry in India. Transcultural Psychiatry, 15, 7–27.
(2006). Suicidal behaviour and the menstrualcycle. Psychological Medicine, 36, 901–912.
(1997). Formations of class and gender: Becoming respectable. London,UK: Sage.
(1988). Can the subaltern speak? Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan.
(2012a). Introduction: Suicide in South Asia: Ethnographicperspectives. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 46, 1–28.
(2012b). The suicide niche: Accounting for self-harm in a South Indian leprosy colony. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 46, 117–144.
(2013).
(The premenstrual and menstrual syndromes – a psychological approach . In S. RachmanEd., Contributions to medical psychology (pp. 153–166). London, UK: Elsevier.2007). Suicide and its prevention: The urgent need in India. Indian Journal of Psychiatry, 49, 81–84.
(2005). Suicide indeveloping countries (1): Frequency, distribution, and association with socioeconomic indicators. Crisis, 26, 104–111.
(