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

在最基本的层面上，文化人类学试图解释文化之间的异同。其中一种方法是将个体人类学家的人种学案例编码为可用于对假设进行统计检验的数据集。本研究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了所有战争和凶杀的总和。据估计，在年轻人中，自杀未遂的人数是自杀未遂人数的100-200倍，往往会造成严重伤害。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，使用的研究设计几乎没有提供关于个人自杀案件的社会和文化背景的信息。因此，目前关于自杀的理论和治疗都是在对大多数人类社会中这一现象知之甚少的情况下发展起来的。鉴于美国日益增长的文化和种族多样性，以及不同文化背景的人之间更频繁的在线互动，了解自杀的跨文化动机和原因对公共卫生有益。该项目将使用来自245个社会的民族志数据来调查自杀行为，这些社会代表了广泛的人类文化多样性。有关自杀的跨文化数据将从人类关系领域档案（HRAF）中获得，该档案包含超过一百万页的民族志报告，跨越几个世纪，涉及数百种不同的文化。来自人类学、临床心理学和进化生物学的自杀行为的关键理论将在HRAF中针对自杀的民族志描述进行测试。这些理论将包括：一组有关自杀的人类学解释，在某种程度上，自杀是相对无力的个人反击与他们有冲突的强大他人的一种手段；临床心理学的主要理论模型，强调逃避痛苦、对他人的负担、解决问题的缺陷和情绪失调；进化生物学的一种理论认为自杀是一种代价高昂的需求信号。此外，自杀的叙述将在元民族志中综合，提供一个全面的自杀人类学观点，这将补充其他学科的观点。

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.