Suicidal behaviour is a serious public health problem. Globally and in South Africa prevalence rates are increasing particularly amongst young adults, highlighting a need for preventative measures. One way to assist with these efforts is to enhance our understanding of suicide by investigating young adult’s views towards suicidal behaviour. To date, limited research exists in the South African context on views towards suicide. The purpose of this study was to explore young adult’s views about suicidal behaviour within the context of culture and religion. A qualitative research design was adopted using semi-structured individual interviews. The participants were ten students from the University of the Witwatersrand between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. The results were analysed using thematic content analysis. The results revealed that participants predominantly identified psychological, social and cultural risk factors for suicidal behaviour, ignoring the influence of psychopathology. The participants also highlighted the influence of the social and cultural context on shaping not only their own views, but those of their family, culture and community. The results indicated that unlike their families, religions and communities, the participants did not hold negative views towards suicide. Instead they appeared to have a great deal of sympathy towards those who had attempted or committed suicide and seemed to denounce the negative views of those around them. Lastly, the results illustrated that role of gender was central to explanations gender differences in suicidal behaviour. Implications of the findings for future research and prevention are discussed.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Clinical Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

This thesis is about attempted suicides and is based on open and in-depth interviews of 31 individuals who have attempted suicide once or several times. The phenomenon is presented through the concept of "career" and from the subject's point of view. Its first objective is to reconstruct the sequence of events that marks the experience of individuals who had decided to commit suicide but have failed in their project. / This sequence starts with the decision to commit suicide, the choice of method, followed by the act itself; it is characterized by an interruption that triggers different forms of intervention: physical treatment in a hospital and psychiatric evaluation; it continues with the return of the individual to his/her familiar circle, facing the life conditions he/she had wanted to leave. / Reconstructing this experience emphasizes the solitary, the physical and the uncertain nature of the suicidal act. It also shows how individuals who do not complete their suicide will be caught in disconcerting and compromising situations, and that their act will force them to justify themselves to different audiences and will taint their relationships with others. Finally, the analysis indicates that the terms in which individuals envisage suicide are transformed in the course of their experience.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Drexel University, 2004. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-127).

Thesis (PhD)--AUT University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (184 leaves ; 30 cm.) in the Archive at the City Campus (T 362.28 ROS)

M.A. / According to Kleespies (2000), a client's behavioural crisis is a condition in which a client has reached a state of mind in which his or her usual coping mechanisms are inadequate to restore equilibrium or to allow him or her to go on functioning in an adaptive way. A crisis may be a turning point for better or worse, but it necessarily does not lead to danger of serious physical harm or life-threatening danger. A behavioural emergency will be taken to mean that a client has reached an acute mental state in which he or she is at imminent risk of behaving in a way that will result in serious harm or death of self unless there is some immediate intervention (Kleespies, 2000). Psychotherapists' work with suicidal clients seems to be placing huge demands on them, particularly on the emotional level, and there are anxieties which are felt when working with suicidal clients. The focus of this research study is on the exploration of the experiences of psychotherapists (qualified or trainees), in working with suicidal clients. Regarding work with suicidal clients, this research study is coming from a slightly different angle as it seeks to attend to therapists' feelings regarding working with clients with suicidal feelings and behaviour. For the purposes of exploration of this study, semi-structured interviews, with the assistance of a tape recorder, were conducted with respondents in order to gather information. These individual interviews were then transcribed, and the typed data was then analysed using the content analysis method of analysing data, according to Weber (1985). This also allowed for common themes, as identified in the interviews, to be obtained and they formed the results of this study. The results indicated a number of themes which emerged, and the researcher decided on selecting and discussing the major themes. There were a variety of themes found as the participants had described how they emotionally experienced working with suicidal clients, and on how they felt the emotional, personal and professional demands of the nature of this work.

This research was conducted in the hope of making some contribution to the emerging field of developmental psychopathology through an examination of the relations between progressive movement toward social-cognitive maturity and socioemotional adjustment in adolescence. The two developmental matters of particular concern were the contrastive ways in which suicidal and nonsuicidal adolescents undertake to secure a sense of their own personal continuity across time, and a sense of conviction in the face of growing skeptical doubts. Alternative accounts of suicidal behaviour generally fail to offer any explanatory framework with which to account for the sudden and dramatic increase in suicidal behaviour during the adolescent years. It is argued in this thesis that the self-destructive tendencies of suicidal youth may be better understood as behavioural manifestations of difficulties in dealing with the developmental matters of personal continuity and nascent skeptical doubt More specifically, the arguments presented in this thesis lead to the hypotheses that suicidal adolescents are less able than their nonsuicidal age-mates to 1) adequately warrant their own and others' persistent identity across time, and 2) make use of more mature strategies for dealing with issues of uncertainty and doubt. To test these predictions, 29 psychiatrically hospitalized suicidal adolescents, who were subsequently categorized in to either a high suicide risk group (n=13) or a low suicide risk group (n =16), and an age- and sex-matched group of 29 high school students were individually administered: (1) The Continuity Measure, comprised of 2 stories and a semi-structured interview procedure which inquires into how subjects warrant their own and others' personal continuity in the face of dramatic personal change; (2) The Nascent Skeptical Doubt Interview, also comprised of 2 stories and an associated semi-structured interview procedure aimed at determining subjects' characteristic strategies for dealing with uncertainty; and (3) The Nascent Skeptical Doubt Questionnaire, which permits the placement of respondents along an objectivist-relativist dimension. The results of this study indicate that, in comparison to their nonhospitalized age-mates, the psychiatrically hospitalized suicidal adolescents did evidence difficulties both in their abilities to understand how they and others could be said to remain continuous or self-same persons throughout time, and in their ability to cope with questions of uncertainty and doubt. In addition, adolescents at high risk for suicide were distinguished from other psychiatrically hospitalized individuals at low risk to suicide, and from their high school age-mates by: 1) their unique inability to find any workable means of justifying persistent identity across change; and 2) by their more extreme endorsement of absolutistic views in the face of uncertainty. These findings are seen to lend support to the general theoretical attempt of this thesis to interpret certain socioemotional difficulties experienced by adolescents as arising from a developmental asynchrony between progressive movement toward the more abstract, relativized, and self-reflective modes of thought associated with cognitive maturity, and the task of securing more mature strategies for dealing with the reconceptualizations of the problems of continuity and doubt which these cognitive advances necessitate. In addition, a number of theoretical, diagnostic, and treatment implications which are seen to follow from the results of this study are discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

Thesis (M. Psych. Clin.)--University of Newcastle, 1995. / Department of Psychology, University of Newcastle. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-78). Also available online.

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Work