Suicide, life course, and life story

This article explores how a life-course perspective and narrative methodology can be used to study risk factors for late-life suicide. A life-course approach to aging and suicide requires consideration of age as both social and personal construction. "On-" and "off-time" events and their impact on adjustment are used to illustrate these social and personal constructions. Cohort, period, and historical events have potentially profound effects on risk for suicide, yet the study of these effects is difficult because they are so often confounded in longitudinal study. Lifelong personality characteristics that are not life-threatening in earlier life may be of greater risk in later life depending on life circumstances such as physical dependencies. A life-story or narrative approach offers an alternative method for incorporating these complicated factors when studying late-life suicide. The psychological autopsy can be considered a type of "narrative" used by various individuals to gain understanding about a suicide.