| dc.description.abstract | The aim of this research project was to gain an in-depth understanding of the psychological vulnerability to suicide in a post conflict Northern Uganda. This was done by examining the psychosocial characteristics that surrounded the individual’s suicide process as narrated by the informants (parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, spouses, in-laws and friends), and by analyzing whether suicide have different meanings for the young adults and the old, and for women and men. Twenty deceased (17 men and three women) were recruited into the project over a period of one year. Data were collected using qualitative psychological autopsy in-depth interviews with the close relatives to the deceased. This data was then broken down into four papers that constitute this thesis. The analysis was guided by the Interpretative Phenomenological model of Analysis (IPA).
The first paper was basically methodological and aimed at exploring the perception of the informants towards the psychological autopsy interviews, that is, how they felt about being interviewed about their relatives who had died by suicide and the effect it had on them. On the whole, this set the stage for understanding the deceased’s painful experiences prior to the suicide. The findings indicated that a significant number of the informants were quite positive about the interviews and a smaller number were rather negative. The informants perceived the interviews as positive in a sense that they provided them with the opportunity to help others in a similar situation and as individuals some informants felt they had been accorded an opportunity for personal development through sharing. Those informants who perceived the interviews negatively attributed this to feelings of guilt, self-reproach and anger that were aroused and painful memories reactivated. Nevertheless, these findings showed that suicide was a reality and a source of concern in this region.
Faced with this reality it was important to know the psychosocial characteristics that surrounded these suicides in terms of gender and age. The second paper addressed this issue by focusing specifically on men, both the young and the old. Lost dignity and social value, no hope for the family’s future, and overwhelming family responsibility were the major factors that characterized the circumstances found to have preceded the men’s suicides. Mental illness was mentioned in only one of the cases. The protracted war in the region left men in rural communities feeling disempowered and disenfranchised, something that possibly aroused a sense of loss of control/defeat, rejection or isolation and humiliation leading to unbearable psychological pain or distress. To get away from such pain, self-inflicted death was envisioned as the only available viable option by some men. The third paper had a similar objective as the previous one but the focus was now on women. Although the deceased had been through various traumatic experiences attributable to the protracted war/conflict in the region, the decision of suicide seemed to have been due to a combination of unpleasant experiences/events that prevailed within the last three months prior to the act. Having no control in life and feeling not cared for by significant others were the overriding themes behind the women’s decision to end their lives.
During the process of reading and reading through the informants’ narratives, alcohol featured prominently in a significant number of the deceased’s lived experiences. Thus the fourth paper explored the role of alcohol in the suicidal process of the deceased. Alcohol was found to have had a direct and/or an indirect influence in the suicide process of 16 out of the 20 decedents studied. Directly alcohol acted as a facilitator of the suicidal process, was a means to suicide, or had an influence on the decedents’ life styles. Indirectly because of the aggressive and other negative behaviors associated with excessive drinking habits of the significant other, alcohol influenced the suicidal process of a few of the deceased specifically the women and an elderly man.
Overall this study revealed that a significant number of the deceased, if not all, had been determined to end their lives. Underlying this determination was probably the strong painful negative emotions that were aroused predominately in response to the “lost masculinity”, suffered by the men. In this study this loss did not only impact on almost all male deceased but to a greater extent played part in the women’s suicidal acts as well. The resultant effect of this loss was unbearable and inescapable psychological pain, which the deceased felt could only be relieved or overcome by suicide | nb_NO |
