The Suicide Gap

This introductory chapter is an initial empirical exploration of suicide in the top six PACS journals from January 2002 until March 2017: Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution Peace Review, Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology and Peace and Change. The journals were searched using the term ‘suicide’ and analysis found that only 0.49% of the 3253 articles reviewed contained information related to the phenomena of suicide; only 12 journal editions from a total of 427 published content related to suicide. In detailed analysis only five of the original eight articles containing ‘suicide’ were considered relevant as the other three were book reviews of subject matter related to suicide. This chapter then presented a detailed empirical analysis of how suicide is represented in these six top PACS journals including what type of suicide is being surveyed and how suicide as a phenomena is expressed in each publication up until 2018. This chapter also included disciplinary encounters with suicide to include considerations from psychology, medicine, sociology, anthropology, social work, criminal justice, political studies and philosophy. This introductory chapter presented an evidentiary platform for the argument that PACS has incorporated the subject of suicide in the literature only to a minor extent over the past 16 years, show what trends are exhibited and define typical encounters with suicide in nine common fields. The chapter concludes with a book summary of the remaining eight Chapters: 2. Understandings of Suicide, 3. Why Peace and Conflict Studies?, 4. Medical Suicide, 5. Instrumental Suicide, 6. Social, Cultural and Political Violence, 7. Intention, Motivation and Intervention, 8. Why Not Suicide?, and, 9. Peacebuilding Suicide.