Suicidology and the right to die

Journal ArticleAs suicidology reflects on the issue of the right to die, it can make no bigger mistake than by seeing suicide and suicidal behavior in short-sighted isolation, without reference to the cultural context within which it occurs. Two kinds of myopia currently afflict us in particularly constricting ways: the refusal to see issues of suicide in the context of larger issues about how we die, and the failure to notice substantial cultural differences in how we think about dying and the choices we make about dying. I think suicidology can profit considerably from examining different end-of-life practices in cultures otherwise closely related to our own, and it is for this reason that I'd like to look here at differences in end-of-life practices and their conceptual backgrounds in three otherwise rather similar countries: the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States. Much of what we say about suicide and suicidal behavior in our own culture may look very different in the light of such contrasts, and much of what we do in studying and preventing suicide may be called into question in this way