As múltiplas mortes de si: suicídio de idosos no Sul do Brasil

Abstract

Elderly suicide is a social phenomenon which has become a major public health problem, especially in Rio Grande do Sul. In this research, due to the disruptions caused by suicide, it has been considered a critical incident (DAS, 1997; MISSE et al., 2012) of great impact in the lives of the family members and the community in general which it reflects, in a certain way, a broader social process. The goal of this research was to understand the social process in which the suicide of elderly people took place and the effects of these critical incidents on the lives of the survivors. The research method focused on a qualitative approach to data. We performed 15 psychosocial autopsies of elderly people (10 men and five women) who committed suicide, and seven semi-structured interviews. Altogether, twenty-two family members (or survivors) took part in this research. The discursive textual analysis (MORAES; GALIAZZI, 2007) allowed the emergence of some categories which were reorganized based on the concept of homology (WILLIAMS, 1979) and the notion of critical incident. The results showed: a) the complex network of factors which interact and overlap, leading up to this critical incident (elderly suicide), some of them being: a low level of education, the influence from German colonization, the importance of work in the lives of farmers, the body injuries caused by the working conditions of tobacco cultivation, the lack of leisure time, the devaluation of the elderly, the loss of meaning in life due to interruption of work, the fear of being a hindrance for the family, the health loss and reduced physical energy, the lack of faith, a history of aggressiveness, a financial loss; b) the effects on the lives of suicide survivors: mental disorders (anxiety, insomnia, difficulty to resume normal life), religious practices to help the deceased's double in their afterlives, house abandonment or attempt to remove, materially, traces of the death, which has mana; c) the necessity of creating suicide Prevention Programs and spreading the word on the subject.