Copyright
©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Culturally sanctioned suicide: Euthanasia, seppuku, and terrorist martyrdom
Joseph M Pierre, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, VA West Los Angeles Healthcare Center, Los Angeles, CA 90073, United States
Author contributions: Pierre JM solely contributed to this manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest: The author reports no conflicts of interest in relation to this manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Joseph M Pierre, MD, Health Sciences Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, VA West Los Angeles Healthcare Center, 11301 Wilshire Blvd, Building 210, Room 15, Los Angeles, CA 90073, United States. joseph.pierre2@va.gov
Telephone: +1-310-4783711 Fax: +1-310-2684448
Received: September 28, 2014
Peer-review started: September 29, 2014
First decision: December 17, 2014
Revised: December 21, 2014
Accepted: January 15, 2015
Article in press: January 19, 2015
Published online: March 22, 2015
Peer-review started: September 29, 2014
First decision: December 17, 2014
Revised: December 21, 2014
Accepted: January 15, 2015
Article in press: January 19, 2015
Published online: March 22, 2015
Core Tip
Core tip: Although most cultures have taboos against suicide, some acts of suicide find moral justification and approval in different cultural settings. These acts typically occur independent of mental illness and are regarded as something other than suicide per se. Strategies for prevention therefore require the development of other culturally sanctioned alternatives.