Testing multi-disciplinary theories of suicide using a cross-cultural database

使用跨文化数据库测试自杀的多学科理论

• 批准号: 1355469
• 负责人: Edward Hagen
• 金额: $ 6.14万
• 依托单位: Washington State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-02-01 至 2016-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1355469&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Testing; multi; disciplinary; theories; suicide

At its most fundamental level cultural anthropology seeks to explain the similarities and differences between cultures. One approach to this is the coding of ethnographic cases from individual anthropologists into data sets that can be used to conduct statistical tests of hypotheses. This proposal takes this approach in a cross-cultural study of suicide. Worldwide, suicide accounts for more deaths than all wars and homicides combined. Attempted suicides, which among young adults are estimated to outnumber completions by a factor of 100-200, often cause serious injury. The vast majority of research on suicidality has been conducted in a narrow range of societies, primarily the nation states of Europe and its former colonies, using study designs that provide little information on the social and cultural contexts of individual suicide cases. Hence, theories of, and treatments for, suicidality are currently developed with little detailed knowledge of the phenomenon in the majority of human societies. Given increasing cultural and ethnic diversity in the U.S. and more frequent online interaction between people of different cultural backgrounds, understanding the cross-cultural motivations and causes of suicide is a benefit to public health.This project will investigate suicide using ethnographic data from 245 societies representing a broad range of human cultural diversity. Cross-cultural data on suicide will be obtained from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF), which contain over a million pages of ethnographic reports, spanning several centuries, on hundreds of different cultures.Key theories of suicidal behavior from anthropology, clinical psychology, and evolutionary biology will be tested against ethnographic accounts of suicide in the HRAF. The theories will include: a group of related anthropological explanations for suicide which see it, in part, as a means for relatively powerless individuals to strike back at powerful others with whom they are in conflict; leading theoretical models from clinical psychology, which emphasize escape from pain, burdensomeness on others, problem solving deficits, and emotional dysregulation; and a theory from evolutionary biology that views suicide as a costly signal of need. In addition, the accounts of suicide will be synthesized in a meta-ethnography, providing a comprehensive anthropological view of suicide that will complement perspectives from other disciplines.

在最基本的层面上，文化人类学试图解释文化之间的相似性和差异性。 其中一种方法是将人类学家个人的人种学案例编码成数据集，用于对假设进行统计检验。 这项建议在自杀的跨文化研究中采用了这种方法。在世界范围内，自杀造成的死亡人数超过所有战争和凶杀案的总和。据估计，年轻人中自杀未遂的人数是自杀完成人数的100至200倍，往往造成严重伤害。绝大多数关于自杀的研究都是在一个狭窄的社会范围内进行的，主要是欧洲的民族国家及其前殖民地，使用的研究设计很少提供关于个体自杀案件的社会和文化背景的信息。因此，自杀倾向的理论和治疗方法目前都是在对大多数人类社会中的这种现象知之甚少的情况下发展起来的。 鉴于美国的文化和种族多样性日益增加，不同文化背景的人之间的在线互动越来越频繁，了解自杀的跨文化动机和原因对公共卫生是有益的。本项目将使用来自245个社会的人种学数据调查自杀，这些数据代表了广泛的人类文化多样性。自杀的跨文化数据将从人类关系领域档案（Human Relations Area Files，HRAF）中获得，该档案包含了数百种不同文化的超过一百万页的人种学报告，跨越了几个世纪。人类学、临床心理学和进化生物学中关于自杀行为的关键理论将与HRAF中关于自杀的人种学描述进行对比。这些理论将包括：一组相关的人类学解释自杀，部分地将其视为相对无力的个体反击与他们发生冲突的强大他人的手段;临床心理学的领先理论模型，强调逃避痛苦，他人的负担，解决问题的缺陷和情绪失调;以及进化生物学的理论，将自杀视为需要的代价高昂的信号。此外，自杀的帐户将综合在一个元民族志，提供一个全面的自杀人类学的观点，将补充其他学科的观点。