Escaping the Echo Chamber: The Night Method and the Role of Disruptive Research in Suicide Studies

Abstract

Traditional approaches to suicide research often emphasise individual pathology, reinforcing conventional medical and religious narratives. Critical suicidology challenges these approaches, advocating for diverse voices and qualitative methodologies that consult and include first-person experiences. Transdisciplinary approaches can deconstruct habitual tendences that lean toward clinical and statistical analyses, and in doing so highlight areas previously overlooked in academic literature. Research on suicide methods is often focused on the most common three to five methods globally, leaving clinicians, professionals and policymakers under prepared while at the same time ignoring first-person experiences. Night Night is one such method of suicide that, to our knowledge, has not yet been specifically highlighted in academic literature, underscoring the need for more innovative and progressive explorations of suicide.