The Discovery of Suicide in Eastern and Southern Africa

Historically African societies have been assumed to have low suicide rates, though there is little conclusive evidence to support this assertion and it is informed by dubious colonial assumptions about the nature of African subjectivity. In particular, longitudinal evidence is lacking. In recent years suicide has begun to attract the attention of psychiatry professionals in Eastern and Southern Africa and of the media. It is now widely argued that suicide rates are increasing, and in some places concern around suicide has taken the appearance of a ‘moral panic’. Suicide is invested with a variety of meanings across the two regions. The results of a small-scale study of attitudes to suicide in Malawi are reported.