A Critical Examination of Psychotherapeutic Interventions to Reimagine Suicide Prevention with Narrative Practices in India

Abstract

The present paper tries to critically examine the mainstream psychotherapeutic interventions having a cognitive orientation in suicide prevention in India. We start with a discussion on how suicide is a complex sociocultural issue, drawing from empirical research in India. We ground ourselves with a social constructionist perspective that informs the power of discourses and knowledge to construct relative realities. Taking this lens, we analyze the various ways in which the dominant psychotherapies construct the complex social issue of suicide as ‘individual psychopathology.’ We will discuss how it avoids the socio-cultural contexts, promotes deficit-based discourses, and ignores the aspects of power and injustice associated with suicide. In the end, we propose possibilities of narrative practices as an alternate post-structuralist approach that can address the socio-cultural aspects of suicide more efficiently in the re-imagination of suicide prevention in India.