Premium
Experiential Research
Author(s) -
Reynolds David K.,
Farberow Norman L.
Publication year - 1973
Publication title -
suicide and life‐threatening behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.544
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1943-278X
pISSN - 0363-0234
DOI - 10.1111/j.1943-278x.1973.tb00121.x
Subject(s) - introspection , situational ethics , psychology , feeling , experiential learning , presentation (obstetrics) , psychotherapist , identity (music) , clinical psychology , social psychology , medicine , pedagogy , physics , acoustics , cognitive psychology , radiology
ABSTRACT: This paper reports a research project that has focused on the inner experience of suicidal depression and its relationship to the social milieu. Adopting a suicidal identity, a clinical anthropologist lived in a psychiatric hospital, and then, along with a clinical psychologist, in several posthospital care facilities for periods from two weeks to a month in each setting. The evidence indicates the researchers were able to establish identities closely resembling those of genuinely suicidal persons. Their experiential accounts along with their observations of the social settings in which they lived provide the core material for analysis. Additional data from hospital records and posttreatment meetings with staff members and fellow patients supplemented the researchers' observations. Data are presented on social situational variables that support and/or undermine feelings of self‐worth, the social presentation of a suicidal self, and introspective accounts of suicidal “world views” and styles of thinking. Suggestions are made for suicide prevention in institutional settings on the basis of life‐supporting relationships and appropriately designed social‐structural features.