Conference Agenda

Suicidology often presents itself as empirically neutral, yet its foundational assumptions are deeply grounded in Western cultural and historical narratives. This presentation traces how meanings of suicide in Western thought, from classical antiquity through Christian moral discourse to modern psychiatry, continue to inform contemporary clinical framings of suicidal behaviour. Drawing on textual analysis, historical case material, and thematic continuities identified in research on ancient suicides, we illustrate how cultural scripts such as honour, shame, guilt, sacrifice, and individual moral responsibility are reproduced in present-day diagnostic language and public discourse.

Through comparison of historically documented suicides with modern clinical cases, we highlight striking parallels in emotional patterns, social interpretations, and symbolic meanings. Rather than treating suicide as a timeless universal phenomenon, this presentation demonstrates how Western epistemologies have shaped prevailing models of suicide, including risk-factor logic, autonomy-based explanations, and the medicalisation of despair.

We argue that recognising these cultural legacies is essential for two reasons. First, it exposes the limits of the presumed universality of Western suicidological models. Second, it opens space for alternative, culturally grounded interpretations from non-Western and minority communities whose experiences do not align with dominant paradigms.

Scientific contribution:
This presentation reframes suicidology as culturally situated rather than epistemologically neutral, bridging the humanities and clinical science. It establishes a necessary foundation for developing culturally inclusive theories and interventions.

Racialised and migrant communities face disproportionate burdens of suicidal distress, yet suicidology has historically framed their experiences through deficit-based or individualised models. This presentation examines racism (interpersonal, institutional, and structural) as a central determinant of suicidal behaviour. Drawing on minority stress theory, intersectionality, and evidence from epidemiological and qualitative research, we analyse how discrimination, exclusion, cultural invalidation, and intergenerational trauma shape vulnerability.

We highlight pathways through which racism contributes to suicidality, including chronic stress activation, identity conflict, restricted access to care, cumulative microaggressions, residential segregation, and sociopolitical marginalisation. These dynamics are often interpreted as individual psychopathology rather than systemic harm. We argue that this misinterpretation perpetuates epistemic injustice and hinders effective prevention.

The presentation also discusses how cultural identity, community resilience, and alternative explanatory models shape responses to distress. For many minority groups, suicidal behaviour is embedded within broader narratives of belonging, migration history, anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, coloniality, or diasporic loss. Recognising these contexts challenges the assumption that Western individualistic explanations account for all forms of suicidality.

Scientific contribution:
This talk repositions racism as an active causal factor rather than a background variable. By integrating structural, cultural, and psychological perspectives, it provides an urgently needed framework for culturally and socially informed prevention strategies. This approach reframes suicide risk not as an attribute of racialised groups but as a consequence of systemic inequities.

Funeral rites and mourning practices surrounding suicide vary widely across societies, offering insight into how communities interpret, sanction, or integrate suicidal death. This presentation draws on ethnographic case studies and cross-cultural literature to examine how ritual responses to suicide shape meanings attributed to the deceased, the family, and the community. Examples include practices involving ritual purification, exclusion from communal burial grounds, reparation ceremonies, symbolic reintegration of the deceased, and protective rituals to prevent further suicides.

We analyse how these rituals are embedded within broader cultural models of cosmology, morality, spirituality, and kinship. In many settings, suicide is not viewed primarily through a psychological or medical lens but through concepts such as spiritual pollution, ancestral disturbance, community imbalance, or moral rupture. Ritual thus becomes a mechanism through which communities negotiate blame, restore order, and re-establish social cohesion.

By contrasting these practices with Western biomedical interpretations, we illustrate the limitations of suicide frameworks that ignore ritual, cultural meaning, and collective emotion. Furthermore, ritual responses often influence help-seeking behaviour, disclosure patterns, family narratives, and community prevention efforts. For migrant and minority groups, conflicting rituals or cultural scripts may create additional stress or misunderstanding within Western clinical settings.

Scientific contribution:
This presentation demonstrates that ritual is not a peripheral cultural detail but a core determinant of how suicide is understood, communicated, and prevented. Incorporating ritual and cultural meaning into suicide research provides a richer foundation for culturally sensitive prevention strategies in increasingly diverse societies.

Psychological autopsy studies have long been considered a gold standard for postmortem analysis of suicide, yet they rely heavily on Western assumptions about selfhood, communication patterns, mental illness, and family reporting. This presentation introduces the Cultural Autopsy, a novel methodological framework that extends psychological autopsy by systematically examining cultural, ritual, social, and structural dimensions of suicide.

The Cultural Autopsy encompasses:

• cultural values, idioms of distress, and explanatory models;
• family and community structures;
• migration histories and minority stress;
• ritual practices, stigma, and cosmological beliefs;
• structural forces such as racism, poverty, and social exclusion;
• contextual events and collective narratives.

We outline methodological procedures including culturally informed informant selection, triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data, ethical considerations in multicultural contexts, and analytic strategies for integrating cultural and structural variables. Case examples from both migrant and non-Western settings illustrate how the Cultural Autopsy reveals dimensions of suicidal behaviour overlooked by conventional approaches.

Scientific contribution:
By exposing the cultural limitations of psychological autopsy and providing a structured alternative, this presentation contributes a significant methodological innovation to the field. The Cultural Autopsy enhances validity, reduces cultural bias, and aligns suicide research with the realities of global and multicultural societies.