Social Context of Girls’ and Women’s Suicidality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC)

Guest Editors

Silvia Sara Canetto, PhD, Colorado State University, USA
Ying-Yeh Chen, MD, ScD, National Ying Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Lakshmi Vijayakumar, MBBS, DPM, PhD, VHS Chennai, India

BMC Women's Health welcomed submissions to our Collection on the Social context of girls’ and women’s suicidality in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Nearly everywhere in the world women have higher rates of nonfatal suicidal behavior than men. Yet most suicidality research has focused on high-income countries (HIC), and on men. This Collection aimed at addressing these gaps in the literature.

New Content Item This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 3: Good Health & Well-Being, SDG 5: Gender Equality, and SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities.

Meet the Guest Editors

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Silvia Sara Canetto, PhD, Colorado State University, USA

Silvia Sara Canetto, Professor of Psychology, Colorado State University, USA, has graduate degrees from Italy, Israel and the USA. Canetto’s research is on cultural scripts of gender and suicidality (ideation, nonfatal, fatal suicidal-behavior; assisted suicide/hastened death), across intersectionalities of age, ability, and sexualities; protest suicide in low- and middle- income countries; and the suicide-protection potential of having both paid employment and family-carework. Canetto is author of over 200 publications. Her 1998 article “The gender paradox in suicide” (with Sakinofsky) is the third most-cited article in Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. Canetto is the recipient of several awards, including the American Association of Suicidology’s Dublin award; and the American Psychological Association’s Heritage Award for longstanding contributions to women and gender research.

Ying-Yeh Chen, MD, ScD, National Ying Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan

Professor Ying-Yeh Chen is a psychiatrist and a social epidemiologist. She obtained her Doctorate degree from Department of Health and Social Behavior, Harvard University, USA. Professor Chen has been working at Taipei City Psychiatric Center after returning from the US in Oct 2004, and has taken an academic position at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University since 2005. Her research focuses on socio-environmental influences on suicide and suicidal behaviors; the social factors she evaluates include the mass media, gendered socialization, childhood environment and access to suicide means. She also conducts a series of studies on suicide attempters, covering topics on media influences, outcome assessment, and rationale for method choice.

Lakshmi Vijayakumar, MBBS, DPM, PhD, VHS Chennai, India

Dr Vijayakumar is Head, Department of Psychiatry, Voluntary Health Services, Adyar, Chennai; Honorary Associate Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia; founder of SNEHA, a suicide prevention NGO in Chennai; and member of WHO’s International Network for Suicide Research and Prevention. She has worked for the decriminalization of suicide; the media guidelines for suicide reporting; and a national suicide-prevention strategy for India. She has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals and books; was an editor of the WHO’s report “Preventing Suicide – A global imperative;” and received numerous awards for her suicide-prevention work, including the International Association for Suicide Prevention Ringel Service award and the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK.

About the Collection

BMC Women's Health welcomed submissions to our Collection on the Social context of girls’ and women’s suicidality in low- and middle-income countries.

Most suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). In a number of LMIC women have similar (e.g., in India, Pakistan) or higher suicide mortality rates than men (e.g., in Bangladesh, Lesotho, Morocco). Nearly everywhere in the world women have higher rates of nonfatal suicidal behavior than men. Yet most suicidality research has focused on high-income countries (HIC), and on men. Dominant suicide research has privileged an individual focus, and specifically psychological perspectives. Limited attention has been given to the social context of suicidality, including the scripts of gender and suicidal behaviors that underlie the cultural variability in women’s suicidality.

This BMC Women’s Health Collection aimed at addressing these gaps in the literature. Specifically, this Collection sought submissions on content such as:

LMIC scripts (e.g., context, precipitants, meanings, attitudes, beliefs, methods, attributed motives, consequences, social responses) of girls’ and women’s suicidality
LMIC girls’ and women’s suicidality (including meanings and consequences) in relation to their social status in their community
LMIC girls’ and women's suicidality as acts of despair and of protest against oppression in patriarchal systems
LMIC girls’ and women’s suicidality in relation to inequalities/discrimination against women (e.g., as measured by gender-inequality indices such as the social institution and gender index).
LMIC girls’ and women’s suicidality in the context of men's violence against girls and women

The term gender has different meanings, in different languages, and over time. In this Collection we were interested in papers that focus on gender as a dimension of social classification; and as a cultural construct in response to the physical and biological differences between females and males. We sought papers that examine how gender as a cultural construct encodes and naturalizes differential power and status for women and men in society. Specifically, for this Collection we sought papers that examine how ideologies and systems of gender enforce and normalize the oppression of women, and also influence women’s suicidality, within and across cultures.

Submissions spanning different research methods were welcome. Ethnographic and narrative perspectives were especially encouraged. Purely descriptive, epidemiological or psychiatric studies were outside the scope of this Collection. An intersectional, human rights, context-based analysis of LMIC girls’ and women’s suicidality was preferred. Submissions by LMIC-based authors were encouraged.

There are currently no articles in this collection.

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Social Context of Girls’ and Women’s Suicidality in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC)" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.