Using the theory of positive disintegration's 'dynamisms' to gauge retrospective suicide lived experience

In this study, the concept of 'disintegration', as explained in the Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) was tested to find out whether it could be used as an indication of retrospective suicide lived experience. This study constitutes one of the first baseline of TPD level III 'dynamisms' in a sample of participant with(out) suicide lived experience. The aims of this study were to test, via an online survey, whether TPD level III disintegrative 'dynamisms' were associated with the retrospective behaviours, emotions, or thoughts of study participants with(out) suicide lived experience. Two Kruskal-Wallis median tests showed that disintegrative 'dynamisms' were (a) significantly higher in participants with suicide lived experience and (b) were higher in persons supported pharmacologically for their mental health. To investigate (a) the 'dynamisms' themselves, (b) their location (i.e., behaviour, thoughts or emotions) and how far in the past they occurred (months or years), a PERMANOVAs and non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (nMDS) based on Euclidean distances were carried out. Those multivariate analyses showed that the different level III 'dynamisms' were statistically different to each other and therefore not interchangeable. The location of 'dynamisms' mattered, and participants scored them differently for behaviour, thoughts and emotions. Unlike other 'dynamisms', 'shame' and 'guilt' elicited the same responses from participants whether the 'dynamisms' were months or years in the past, suggesting that those two 'dynamisms' may be the best candidates for counsellors to use to address disintegration and suicide prevention with their patients. Overall, the study results suggests that there is merit in using the vocabulary of TPD 'dynamisms' in suicide prevention.