Suicide and self-injury: psychosocial perspectives
- Submission status
- Open
- Submission deadline
This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 03 - Good Health & Wellbeing.
According to the World Health Organization more than 700,000 people each year — or one person every 40 seconds — die by suicide. Research suggests that for each adult who dies by suicide there may be 20 others who have attempted it or engaged in a form of self-harm.
Suicide accounts for around 1.3% of all deaths worldwide, with Low- and Middle-Income countries accounting for over 75%. Globally, suicide is ranked the 17th leading overall cause of death; alarmingly, among young adults it ranks fourth. The rate of suicide deaths for men is more than double that for women; yet sex disparity is uneven across regions, with a male-to-female ratio ranging from as low as 1.4 in the South-East Asia to nearly 4.0 in the Americas.
The wide variations in suicide and self-harm rates around the world is the product of many complex factors: the availability and quality of mental health provision and treatment clearly plays a role; as do recognition and understanding of suicide, ethnocultural and socioeconomic issues.
This Collection provides a forum for sociological and psychological perspectives on suicide and non-suicidal self harm.
We invite original research (qualitative and quantitative), theoretical and conceptual papers, systematic reviews, and case studies primarily from anthropology, sociology, human geography, demography, and psychological science. We are also open to non-psycho-sociocentric perspectives from allied fields such as philosophy and the medical humanities. Research from the clinical sciences, psychiatry, neuroscience or nursing will not be considered in scope.
Scholarship on the following — as well as related areas — is welcomed:
- Conceptual and theoretical framing of suicide and non-suicidal self-harm
- Cross-cultural, ethnoracial, demographic, and comparative perspectives
- Predictors and risk factors (e.g., socioeconomic factors, social environment, etc)
- Relational, behavioural, communicative and interactional dimensions
- Role of technology/cyberspace in prevention and exacerbation
- Youth suicide/self-harm
- Prevention strategies (e.g., health care provision, education and awareness, etc).
- Suicidal ambivalence and/or suicide decision
