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Sociological research on suicide has tended to favour functionalist approaches, and quantitative methods. This article argues for an alternative engagement – drawing on interpretive paradigms, and inspired by 'live' methodologies, we make an argument for a haunted sociology of suicide. This approach, informed by Avery Gordon's haunted sociological imagination and Lauren Berlant's concept of slow death, works between the structural realities of inequalities in suicide rates and the more (in)tangible affects of suicide as they are lived. These theoretical engagements are illustrated through an empirical study which used collaborative, arts-based discussion groups about suicide. The groups were held with 14 people, all affected in different ways by suicide, and attending a community-based mental health centre in a semi-rural location in Scotland, UK. A narrative-informed analysis of data generated through these groups shows the creative potential of both arts-based methodologies, and interpretive sociologies, in deepening understanding of how inequalities in rates of suicide may be experienced and made sense of. We illustrate this via two related metaphors ('the point' and 'the edge') which recurred in the data. Our analysis underlines the vital relevance of sociology to suicide studies – and the urgent need for diverse sociological engagement and action on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to literature on live methods and specifically to the idea of research as an informed provocation of experience in the context of growing methodological experimentation in social science research. The liveness of our method sits with our close attention to inquiry as encompassing of human/non-human relational encounters that, drawing upon a materialism of lively matter, come together in the form of material thinking. We sought to foster a creative encounter between people with experience of self-harm and published narratives about self-harm in the light of 'provoked perplexity'. We suggest that deliberately 'provoking perplexity' in creative and live methodologies, opens up possibilities for inquiry into the unimaginable and unthinkable. Participating in a series of collaborative, creative (visual art) response workshops, our participants troubled the idea of meaning as neat and coherent, linear and final, showing instead how it dwells precisely in the very process of inquiring by means of creative making that constitutes practice as research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suicide is a major public health concern, patterned by systematic inequalities, with lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT+) people being one example of a minoritised group that is more likely to think about and attempt suicide worldwide. To address this, UK national suicide prevention policies have suggested that LGBT+ people should be prioritised in prevention activities. However, there is little research seeking to understand how LGBT+ suicide is re/presented in political and policy spheres. In this article, we critically analyse all mentions of LGBT+ suicide in UK parliamentary debates between 2009 and 2019 and in the eight suicide prevention policies in use during this period. We argue that LGBT+ suicide is understood in two contrasting ways: firstly, as a pathological 'problem', positioning LGBT+ people either as risks or as at risk and in need of mental health support. Alternatively, suicide can be seen as externally attributable to perpetrators of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate, requiring anti-hate activities as part of suicide prevention. In response, we argue that although these explanations may appear oppositional; they both draw on reductive explanations of LGBT+ suicide, failing to consider the complexity of suicidal distress, thus constraining understandings of suicide and suicide prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suicide prevention policies set out government strategies and priorities for action and in doing so construct meanings, legitimise knowledge and frame possibilities. Despite their importance, prevention policies remain underexamined and taken for granted. Using Bacchi's poststructuralist 'What's The Problem Represented To Be' approach we critically analyse UK suicide prevention policies as sites of biopolitical surveillance and consider how suicide is constructed within such policy regimes. Drawing on Foucault, we contextualise suicide as an object and focus of biopolitical surveillance. We argue that suicide prevention policies seek to negate the contingency and complexity of suicide and instead represent it as amenable to biopolitical governance. Prevention policies do this by framing suicide as a visible and predictable object that can be known and governed via surveillance driven risk management. Such policies risk marginalising some publics, and diverting attention from the political, social and economic contexts of injustice in which suicides occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasingly common way that high rates of male suicide are understood is via men's ostensibly poorer abilities to talk about – and more generally seek help for – problems in general, and emotional problems specifically. This has led to the development of public mental health campaigns which urge men to 'speak up' more often about the problems they face. I argue that both the initial claim, and the enactment of this claim in public mental health campaigns, is problematic, resting on simplistic assumptions about men and gender difference, and serving to detract attention from structural drivers of suicide. Drawing on a narrative analysis of in-depth interviews with ten men who had self-harmed, thought about, or attempted suicide, this paper focuses attention on the content and contexts of 'talk'. I argue that public health campaigns promoting 'talk' in response to male suicide neglect the interpersonal and structural contexts in which talk occurs, including considerations of power and structural inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]