The study of suicide from a feminist perspective

The present paper presents a feminist transformation of the study of suicide, following a stage model proposed by Schuster and Van Dyne for the feminist transformation of research in general: (1) invisible women, (2) the search for missing female scholars or suicide, (3) suicidal women as disadvantaged, (4) suicidal women studied on their own terms, and (5) a genuine transformation of the perspectives guiding the field of study. In particular, it has been suggested that a feminist transformation of suicidology would lead us to focus on attempted suicide as the norm while viewing completed suicide as a failed behavior in which the individual inappropriately died.