From a Cultural Stance: Suicide and Aging in a Changing World

Extract

Beyond its empirical importance documented through epidemiological data, suicide is of symbolic importance due to its close relationship with the values of life and death, privacy and openness, responsibility and reliance, and suffering and resistance. It appears, in daily life circumstances, to reveal or remind us of the limits of our perception of others' intimate world and of our fundamental solitude in the face of life and death. The issues associated with suicide, particularly with elderly suicide, must be confronted. Researchers, clinicians, and planners, among others, must take care not to close the chapter prematurely on suicide by pretending to have discovered “the” final cause of suicide, in a kind of scientific exorcism.