Yashant Sharma
Clinical Psychology
25 October 2019
Podcast review on Suicidality and Minutes from Grey’s Anatomy
We often see how people usually think of suicidal states as a phase of mental stage, where one attempts to take of their lives intentionally either from blunt physical means lie cutting or slitting, or through arbitrary means such as overdose on drugs, alcohol or other substance abuse. It has been argued that it is only the mental stress that forces someone into the phase of self-harm, but in this paper I argue that it is purely based on environmental factors, and sometimes very minuscule stimuli induced in the environment can affect someone’s capacity to give up on ones’ own life. I will also bring in examples from daily life where people who undergo immense physical pains like amputations or losing a body part that messes up with their psyche and might induce a feeling of self harm.
It is often argued in clinical / abnormal psychology books that suicidal acts often fall into a mood disorder under the DSM V psychology recommendations, but I support the claims made my psychologists that it is entirely an operating entity which is stimulated by mood disorders. It is certainly related to the field of mood disorders but is still a different entity on its own. It exists in its sown entirety which might be a self- explanatory reason like loss of a loved one, unable to meet personal commitments, and the perpetrator ends up taking their own life, from injury (self-harm), self suffocate (collapse of the vent), inflicted injury to kill themselves, an explicator implicitly. These are the forms which one might choose to give up on their life. Stressing again that this is not an explicit mental disorder but a mental state. In some cases, victims can have mental symptoms, and may switch to alcoholism as a coping mechanism, which tends to worsen their rational decision making capacities and worsens the depression, that a person is going through.
Similar cases can be seen in hospital settings, where people undergo the same irrational decision making pathway, but in a completely different setting i.e, where they feel that they are bed ridden, after they lose a body part, and the grief induced by that phenomena, acts as a trap for them to undergo suicidal pathway. A similar case was observed in a case study of a young girl who lost her arms and one leg, during a boat accident, and despite having a rigid emotional support system by the hospital team, her frustration of just being not capable for living life on her own terms, she cut off her own newly amputated hand’s stitches, and attempted suicide.
There have been studies that show that psychopathological risk, like substance abuse,psychotic, personality disorder; acts as factors for adolescent suicide and suicidal behaviour. The relation between psychopathology with age and gender, in adolescent suicide has been dramatically seen a hike, which is not only limited to support system provided by family environment, but also stress events like social acceptance, teenage instability are widely considered by psychiatrists dealing with teens prone to suicidal risks. Longitudinal studies examining predictors of suicide, have shown that environmental factors certainly play a crucial role in minimizing or maximizing the vulnerability of suicidal behaviour (Brent, 1995) Another study that seeks to understand possible relationships between environmental factors, primarily locus control and risks of suicide among adolescents found that higher levels of suicide risks showed a linear correlation/ association with a more external locus of control orientation. Similarly, in this case too, relationships between suicide risk and several environmental factors, including parental- peer support availability, social acceptance, bullying, was observed. Hence, the aim for discussing these varied cases, show that suicidal phase can be induced by various factors and are just not confined to a person's own mental wellbeing. Intervention studies like (Evans, Owens, & Marsh, 2005) claim that the figures can be drastically reduced, if there are healthy interpersonal environmental support availability to the patients.
Suicide mortality has a long standing in context of socio and economic societal contexts. Historically, it was argued that the burden of suicide in a society reflected the political, religious, economic and social environment in which the behaviour was embedded (Durkheim, 1897). And it was found that social and environmental contexts present a diverse and varied influences on mortality caused by suicides(Milner, Hjelmeland, Arensman, & Leo, 2013). Various factors like Income, net worth, trends in job availability, family support systems, friends support groups, religion, demographic and geographical regions, exposure to suicides through media, alcoholism, and availability of triggering stimulants like knives, guns, etc should be considered while assessing a patient. All these if taken in account while drafting policies, and acknowledging the importance of social-environmental factors, can be used to reduce the number of suicides every year.
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