‘What Destroys a Person When that Person Appears to Be Destroying Himself?’ Intrapolitical Discourses on r/SuicideWatch

Abstract

Passive suicidality is endured by 1 in 10 adults, yet remains understudied. Ideation-to-action theories in suicidology offer explanatory reach: a capacity to understand phenomenologies of suicidal ideation, and to examine questions of why certain individuals are afflicted with a desire for death. Critical suicidology implicates oppressive societal hierarchies and cultural scripts in undermining human worth intra-psychically. The internalization of these systemic, “intrapolitical,” drivers of hopelessness may represent a key pathway to suicidal ideation. We fine-tuned theoretically grounded pretrained BERT models to detect expressions of perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness, self-hatred, and loneliness among 988 r/SuicideWatch posts. Embracing a radically reflexive methodology, which highlights and interrogates investigator subjectivity amid the act of knowledge creation, thematic analysis isolated potential psychopolitical determinants of suicidality: impossible expectations of accomplishment, physical beauty, and self-mastery; self-convictions of undeservingness of life, futurity, and emotional support; and the negligence and collapse of traditional caregiving institutions. Modeling post authors’ own comments as textual confounders, these posts were shown to elicit greater aggregate positivity across their 15,616 direct-response comments. These dialogues demonstrate implicit anti-suicidist practice, rejecting pathologizing lenses and acts of silencing, as an r/SuicideWatch-specific injunctive norm. We discuss the implications of over-specified theoretical subconstructs challenging the distributional hypothesis, and share insights and tensions surfaced during reflexive interrogation.