Talk:Suicidology

Parts of study
Parasuicide is when someone causes deliberate harm to themselves. For example, if someone were to take an overdose of medicine and live. This feels incomplete. It does not explain why taking an overdose of medication and subsequently living is parasuicidal in nature. Parasuicide is simply not committing (to) suicide. That's really all there is to it. Many 'failed' attemptees may not yet acknowledge their hesitency to go through with an actual suicide; though some failed suicide attempts are really that, as stated in the Suicide myths section. Parasuicidal behaviour is doing something you know could be dangerous enough to kill you (i.e. playing with or edging closer to ″the dose which makes the poison″), but (whether knowingly or not) setting up a scenario in which you can be saved. The main point in the example is that the idea of taking an overdose of medicine comes from pop culture. There is still a sense of dread or unknown danger around it, but the act is generally portrayed as survivable and often followed with care.

There are times when there can be an element of originality or creativity, such as my own anecdotal recollection wherein I took a months worth of two different medications and filled a tub with water. The effects came on pretty strong as I lost focus of what I was doing and apparently even talked on the phone with my psychologist. I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened between filling the tub and waking up the next day in a hospital bed (feeling quite refreshed I might add). After years, I've finally pinned it down to parasuicide and not a strictly failed attempt, mainly because it followed after a conflict around a time I was highly vulnerable. If I had a pool I may have gone swimming!

It's tricky because, in contrast to bringing attention to personal issues in parasuicidality, some people will believe their overdose was a means to "have the pain stop" or to "sleep for a really long time". At face value this may seem to indicate the opposite conclusion (i.e. not contemplating death), though I digress, since we do know suicide is rooted in escape. It's difficult to truly confirm or refute intentions without some display of insight from the subject, and because there is an element of impulsivity to it. Sometimes parasuicidal thought can reflect a mature attempt at understanding one's own mortality.

My thoughts on the matter are reflective of experiential study.

Suicide myths
The relevance of what is discussed in Suicidology to the subject of this article is highly questionable. The section discusses common misconceptions about suicide in general, but that's not directly related to suicidology as an academic field. The section seems to have been in this article for more than ten years, so I'm tagging it with Relevance section for now, rather than removing it immediately. First Comet (talk) 10:52, 3 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I have removed the section. See Special:Diff/1179957474 for the text if someone is willing to work on it by moving the section to an appropriate suicide-related article. Be sure to properly attribute the text to this article in your edit summary (see WP:COPYWITHIN). First Comet (talk) 15:26, 13 October 2023 (UTC)