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In this article I argue that critical phenomenology, informed by critical race and intersectional scholarship, offers a useful lens through which to consider suicide and self-harm among men. To illustrate this, I draw on a narrative informed analysis of the accounts of 10 men who had experienced self-harm, read through Sara Ahmed's queer phenomenology. Two themes are emphasised: gendered, raced, classed bodies that are (unexpectedly) stopped; and bodies that, despite being stopped, still 'do' – enacting violence and control against self and other. Critical phenomenology can support much needed examination of the complex ways in which socioeconomic class, race, gender and age structure experiences of distress among different social groups. This approach enables a simultaneous examination of the way that privilege and oppression may shape both the experience of distress, and the way it is responded to – including through violence against the self, and against others.

Suicide is complex; yet suicide research is dominated by 'psy' disciplines which can falter when seeking to explain social patterning of suicide rates, and how this relates to individual actions. This article discusses a multidisciplinary report which aimed to advance understandings of socioeconomic inequalities in suicide rates in the UK. Contrasts are drawn between health psychology and sociology. Important intersections are highlighted, including a lack of attention to socioeconomic inequalities, and an emphasis on adverse life experiences and emotions to understand inequalities and suicide. There are also curious disconnects, both within and between relevant psychological and sociological perspectives. The article argues that there are significant gaps in existing theorization regarding suicide, which can only be addressed through meaningful inter-disciplinary collaborations between sociologists, psychologists and others. Current theorization in mainstream suicide research is limited by its failure to engage with enduring, yet vitally important sociological debates regarding structure and agency, nature and culture.

Young people who self-harm face challenges in seeking help, and there is a lack of qualitative research with under 16s despite rates of self-harm being high and help-seeking low. Data were collected from 122 young people aged 13–26 years, 108 of whom were aged 13–16 years, through multiple methods. This included six focus group discussions with 33 young people who had limited experience of self-harm; in-depth interviews with five people who had self-harmed and a qualitative online survey completed by 88 young people who had self-harmed. The analysis was thematic. Participants articulated views which could inhibit help-seeking: Young people provided strong negative judgements about 'attention-seeking' as a motive for self-harm, while 'private' self-harm was valorized. Talking to others about self-harm was identified as beneficial, but it was unclear how possible this would be, if self-harm must also be kept 'secret'. Findings suggest that framing self-harm as private and secretive may be counterproductive.

Drawing on narrative research conducted in the UK about self-injury and embodiment, this article presents a novel sociological analysis of self-injury, utilizing the concept of emotion work. By focusing explicitly on embodied methods of 'doing' emotion work, the article highlights the under-recognized importance of examining the practical, corporeal practices that can be involved in emotion work. I reflect on the sociological and theoretical significance of examining self-injury as embodied emotion work – both as an analytic concept and as a narrative resource.

Dans cet article, je soutiens que la phénoménologie critique, nourrie par une approche critique de la race et des études intersectionnelles, constitue une approche pertinente pour comprendre le suicide et l'automutilation chez les hommes. Je m'appuie sur l'analyse des récits de 10 hommes ayant fait l'expérience de l'automutilation, que j'examine à travers le prisme de la phénoménologie queer de Sara Ahmed. Deux thèmes principaux ressortent de cette étude : des corps genrés, racialisés et de classe sont (brusquement) interrompus dans leur trajectoire de vie ; mais ces corps, malgré le fait d'être ainsi « arrêtés », continuent d'agir, exerçant de la violence et du contrôle envers eux-mêmes et envers autrui. La phénoménologie critique contribue ainsi à l'examen indispensable de la manière dont l'origine sociale, la race, le genre et l'âge s'articulent pour structurer une expérience différente de la détresse selon les groupes sociaux. Cette approche permet ainsi d'étudier la façon dont le privilège social et l'oppression façonnent l'expérience de la détresse et, dans le même temps, la réponse à cette détresse – y compris sous la forme d'une violence exercée envers soi-même et envers autrui.

Sociological research on suicide has tended to favour functionalist approaches, and quantitative methods. This article argues for an alternative engagement – drawing on interpretive paradigms, and inspired by 'live' methodologies, we make an argument for a haunted sociology of suicide. This approach, informed by Avery Gordon's haunted sociological imagination and Lauren Berlant's concept of slow death, works between the structural realities of inequalities in suicide rates and the more (in)tangible affects of suicide as they are lived. These theoretical engagements are illustrated through an empirical study which used collaborative, arts-based discussion groups about suicide. The groups were held with 14 people, all affected in different ways by suicide, and attending a community-based mental health centre in a semi-rural location in Scotland, UK. A narrative-informed analysis of data generated through these groups shows the creative potential of both arts-based methodologies, and interpretive sociologies, in deepening understanding of how inequalities in rates of suicide may be experienced and made sense of. We illustrate this via two related metaphors ('the point' and 'the edge') which recurred in the data. Our analysis underlines the vital relevance of sociology to suicide studies – and the urgent need for diverse sociological engagement and action on this topic.

This article contributes to literature on live methods and specifically to the idea of research as an informed provocation of experience in the context of growing methodological experimentation in social science research. The liveness of our method sits with our close attention to inquiry as encompassing of human/non-human relational encounters that, drawing upon a materialism of lively matter, come together in the form of material thinking. We sought to foster a creative encounter between people with experience of self-harm and published narratives about self-harm in the light of 'provoked perplexity'. We suggest that deliberately 'provoking perplexity' in creative and live methodologies, opens up possibilities for inquiry into the unimaginable and unthinkable. Participating in a series of collaborative, creative (visual art) response workshops, our participants troubled the idea of meaning as neat and coherent, linear and final, showing instead how it dwells precisely in the very process of inquiring by means of creative making that constitutes practice as research.

This briefing was based on findings from a two year longitudinal qualitative study funded by the NHS Lothian Health Services Research Unit. ; The situation in Scotland - Addressing the needs of children and families affected by parental substance misuse (alcohol and drugs) is a priority for policy and practice (Scottish Government, 2013). The number of adults dependent on opiods and/or benzodiazephines has increased in recent years, and it is estimated that up to 60,000 children in Scotland are affected by a parent's drug use. Policy initiatives emphasise the importance of early intervention alongside evidence-based parenting interventions and recovery-orientated substance misuse treatment (ACDM, 2003; Scottish Government, 2008; Scottish Government, 2012).

Using the format of dialogue, this paper is a collaborative exploration of navigating academia in self-harm scarred bodies. Prompted by the proposal of social media regulators to blur and ban self-harm scars, thus communicating such bodies as "dangerous," our dialogue considers personal notions of activism, researcher identity, emotional labor, future potential, and the importance of finding and building communities for embodied solidarity. Structured as a single flowing discussion, the dialogue itself is (re)constituted from conversation, follow-up emails, and reviewer feedback. Explorations rely predominantly on personal experience and are supported in places by literature which has informed and shaped our ideas. In itself, this paper will be an "everyday act of defiance" in being seen, as well as advocating for spaces such as ECQI where meaningful connections can be instigated and maintained, and dialogues continued.

Suicide prevention policies set out government strategies and priorities for action and in doing so construct meanings, legitimise knowledge and frame possibilities. Despite their importance, prevention policies remain underexamined and taken for granted. Using Bacchi's poststructuralist 'What's The Problem Represented To Be' approach we critically analyse UK suicide prevention policies as sites of biopolitical surveillance and consider how suicide is constructed within such policy regimes. Drawing on Foucault, we contextualise suicide as an object and focus of biopolitical surveillance. We argue that suicide prevention policies seek to negate the contingency and complexity of suicide and instead represent it as amenable to biopolitical governance. Prevention policies do this by framing suicide as a visible and predictable object that can be known and governed via surveillance driven risk management. Such policies risk marginalising some publics, and diverting attention from the political, social and economic contexts of injustice in which suicides occur.