‘I Didn’t Do It!’ Lived Experiences of Suicide Attempts Made Without Perceived Intent

Overview: Suicide is widely accepted as a willful intentional act to end one’s own life. This research focuses on a rare phenomenon where some individuals attempt suicide without any discernable intention or self-agency in their identifiable suicidal action, a phenomenon that is in no way defined or understood as an accident.Proposal text: Suicide is considered to be a conscious and intentional act that is carried out within a social and cultural context. Researchers contend that suicidal intent is difficult to assess and individuals attempting suicide do not always know what their intentions were at the time of the attempt (Hjelmeland, 1996). A suicide attempt as per its definition does require some degree of intent, whether a fully intentional act or a less defined thought. This study examines the unique phenomenon of a cluster of suicide attempts conducted without perceived intent, ideation, plan, volition, or agency in a remote province in Central Asia.
Twelve individuals who self-identified as having made a suicide attempt were interviewed for a grounded theory study. Four participants identified their suicide attempt as having occurred without perceived ideation, intention, agency, or volition. These attempts were highly impulsive actions, described as sudden occurrences.
To fully examine this phenomenon, a thematic secondary analysis was conducted on the described lived experiences of these individuals who made such unintended suicide attempts and examined the differences between their experiences of those who made their suicide attempt with intent and agency. Authors conducted a secondary analysis of qualitative data originally collected and examined a specific and unique set of participant experiences related to suicide attempts made without agency using thematic analysis
Four out of the 12 participants in this study made a suicide attempt without any reported intent, ideation, plan or agency. None of these participants reported to have any mental illness including psychotic disorders, mood disorders, substance use disorders or personality disorders and were very functional with their daily lives. Each of these four individuals reported that they did not have any significant reason to kill themselves no prior intent to end their lives. These participants described that the suicide attempt happened to them and that the action of making the suicide attempt was not of their own doing (emphasis added). Three of these four participants attributed their attempt to an altered state of mind, akin to being in a trance. They described their experience as related to the supernatural and made sense of their attempt in religious and spiritual terms. Further, each of these participants stated that they did not want to ever attempt suicide again and were afraid that this would happen to them in the future. Results found that such instances of suicide attempts included themes of impulsivity, not knowing what happened, feeling out of control, attributing these experiences to the supernatural, and being fearful of such events occurring again.
Further, all participants identified as being Muslim and acknowledged the religious and moral prohibition of suicide. A number of possibilities for such occurrences will be discussed in the presentation including medical, psychiatric, cultural, religious, legal and environmental influences.
Clinical practice may need to be adapted to address experiences of such unique suicide attempt experiences. In addition, further research is warranted to understand and examine the phenomenon of suicide attempts conducted carried out without perceived intent, ideation, plan, volition, or agency.