Women victims of self-immolation: a ‘Grounded Theory’ study in Iran

A model to explain suicide by self-immolation among Iranian women: A grounded theory study

“…Replicating some previous reports [3,22,27], we found that cultural context was highly relevant to self-immolation behavior in our sample. Our findings extend previous work by subdividing cultural context into two key components, cultural customs and values and cultural meaning and identification.…”

“…Researchers also report that a specific family quarrel is frequently an immediate precursor for self-immolation attempts [10]. Similar to reports from other countries, Iranian studies also cite cultural factors that increase risk of self-immolation including marriage-and divorce-related traditions that impact family conflicts, imitative acts whereby women imitate self-immolation threats from peers and sisters [10,29], mental health disorders [30,31], para-suicidal gestures [10,27,32] and easy access to accelerants [10,22].…”

“…Results from several different Iranian provinces, including Tabriz [12], Mazandaran [14], Kohkiluye Va Boyer Ahmad [15], Kurdistan [16], Ilam [9,23], Kermanshah [10], Tehran [24,25], Khuzestan [26], Lorestan [27] and Zahedan [28], suggest women's conflicts with their husbands and their husband's family are a primary motive for attempting self-immolation. Researchers also report that a specific family quarrel is frequently an immediate precursor for self-immolation attempts [10].…”

“…In particular, previous work -typically conducted using quantitative methods (see [27] for an exception that used qualitative strategies) -has failed to look beyond single demographic and individual factors to consider the multifaceted, complex, and integrated socio-cultural issues that create risk of self-immolation [33]. To develop appropriate culturally relevant prevention programs, self-immolation must be considered from the perspective of an interaction between human behavior and the environment in which that human lives [34].…”

Variation in the Incidence of Self-Immolation According To Culture and Income Level: A Literature Review

“…In low-income countries, we identified arranged marriages, spousal violence and political reasons as the motives [20,21,37,38,53].…”