Critical Suicide Theory and Research -- From the Gender Paradox to Cultural Scripts of Suicidal Behaviors: Interview with Professor Silvia Sara Canetto | Episode 73

In this episode, I interview Professor Silvia Sara Canetto, the leading scholar on critical studies of gender, culture and suicidal behaviors from intersectional and global perspectives. 

Professor Canetto is most well-known for her research on the gender paradox of suicide, a term she coined, with Isaac Sakinofsky, to refer to the fact that girls and women are more likely to report suicidal thoughts and to engage in suicidal behavior, and yet they are less likely to die of suicide than boys and men.

Professor Canetto is also the author of the theory of cultural scripts of gender and suicidal behavior--a theory that builds on the insights she gained from researching the gender paradox of suicide. 

In this interview Professor Canetto discusses what U.S. suicidology was like when she entered the field as an international student at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago. She reviews her contributions to the field—from challenging its stigmatizing and gender-biased language (e.g., terms like “successful suicide” to refer to what in the United States is a more common male-outcome of suicidal behavior) to challenging dominant gender-biased theories of suicidal behaviors (e.g., that women’s suicidal behavior is an emotional and impulsive reaction to trivial relationship problems, and that men’s suicidal behavior is a desperate but deliberate response to serious social and economic adversities).

Professor Canetto then describes her theory and research on suicide scripts. A key point of her theory is that there are different situations, by culture, when suicidal behavior is relatively permissible and even expected, from certain people, using certain methods, and with specific social consequences. Another important point of her theory is that the different cultural scripts contribute to the cultural variability in suicidality rates. This is because suicidal individuals are influenced by these scripts in choosing their course of action and in giving their suicidal act public meaning.  At the end of the interview Professor Canetto reviews examples of research supporting her theory. She also addresses the implications of the theory and evidence on cultural scripts of suicidal behavior--including that there are no universal risk and protective factors, and that therefore prevention should be grounded on local scripts of suicidal behavior.  

About Prof. Silvia Sara Canetto

Silvia Sara Canetto, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Colorado State University, USA. She has graduate degrees from Italy, Israel, and the USA. She speaks, with an accent, every language she knows, English, French, Spanish, Hebrew, and her native Italian. Her scholarship on cultural scripts of suicide has been recognized with the American Association of Suicidology’s (AAS) Shneidman early-career award, and AAS highest-honor, the Dublin award. Her article “The gender paradox in suicide” is the third most-cited in Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. She is “Fellow” of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Gerontological Society of America.

SHOW NOTES

Work by Professor Canetto

Canetto, S. S. (1992-1993). She died for love and he for glory: Gender myths of suicidal behavior. Omega, 26, 1-17. 

Canetto, S. S. (1994). Gender issues in the treatment of suicidal individuals. Death Studies, 18, 513-527.

Canetto, S.  S. (1997a).  Gender and suicidal behavior: Theories and evidence.  In R. W.  Maris, M. M.  Silverman, & S. S. Canetto (Eds.), Review of suicidology (pp. 138-167). New York: Guilford.

Canetto, S. S. (1997b). Meanings of gender and suicidal behavior during adolescence.  Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 27, 339-351. 

Canetto, S. S. (2008). Women and suicidal behavior: A cultural analysis. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 78, 259-266. 

Canetto, S. S. (2017).  Suicide: Why are older men so vulnerable? Men and Masculinities, 20, 49-70.

Canetto, S. S., & Chen, J. (2020). Women and suicidal behavior: Paradigm-shift lessons from China.  In F. Cheung & D. Halpern (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of the international psychology of women (pp. 497-513). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Canetto, S. S., & Lester, D. (2002). Love and achievement motives in women’s and men’s suicide notes. Journal of Psychology, 136, 573-576.

Canetto, S. S., & Rezaeian, M. (2020). Protest suicide among Muslim women: A human rights perspective. In M. E. Button & I. Marsh (Eds.), Suicide and social justice: New perspectives on the politics of suicide and suicide prevention (pp. 102-121). New York: Routledge.

Canetto, S. S., & Sakinofsky, I. (1998). The gender paradox in suicide. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 28, 1-23. 

Cato, J. E., & Canetto, S. S. (2003). Attitudes and beliefs about suicidal behavior when coming out is the precipitant of the suicidal behavior. Sex Roles, 49 (9/10), 497-505.

Dahlen, E. R., & Canetto, S.  S. (2002).  The role of gender and suicide precipitant in attitudes toward nonfatal suicidal behavior. Death Studies, 26, 99-116.

Winterrowd, E., Canetto, S. S., & Benoit, K. (2017).  Permissive beliefs and attitudes about older adult suicide: A suicide enabling script? Aging & Mental Health, 21, 173-181.  

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