Brief history of suicide in the West

Abstract

This article intends to proceed, through an exploratory type of research, to the investigation of the conceptions of suicide throughout Western history, from the oldest records found in the Bible, as well as in the records left by Greek philosophers in the Ancient Age, through the Middle Ages and their strong moral and religious brilliance, possessions and life in the afterlife. Then The Renaissance, which marks the passage to the Modern Age, together with the century of lights and the first scientific conceptions, which inaugurate a more humanist perspective. Contemporary conceptions are then covered, such as the sociological current, proposed by Durkheim, to the current context, marked by the prevalence of medical discourse and associations between suicide and mental disorders. It should be noted that the notion of suffering and mental illness as a cause of suicide is relatively recent, and that even so, there is room for other interpretations of the characteristics, such as the Werther effect.

Keywords: suicide; history; conception.