Time, trauma, and the brain: How suicide came to have no significant precipitating event

In this article, we trace shifting narratives of trauma within psychiatric, neuroscience, and environmental epigenetics research. We argue that two contemporary narratives of trauma – each of which concerns questions of time and psychopathology, of the past invading the present – had to be stabilize...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science in context 2020-09, Vol.33 (3), p.299-327
Main Authors: Lloyd, Stephanie, Larivée, Alexandre
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brain
Environment models
Epigenetics
Etiology
Humans
Mental disorders
Narratives
Nervous system
Post traumatic stress disorder
Psychopathology
Risk Factors
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - diagnosis
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - etiology
Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic - psychology
Suicide
Suicides & suicide attempts
Trauma
Traumatic brain injury
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Summary:In this article, we trace shifting narratives of trauma within psychiatric, neuroscience, and environmental epigenetics research. We argue that two contemporary narratives of trauma – each of which concerns questions of time and psychopathology, of the past invading the present – had to be stabilized in order for environmental epigenetics models of suicide risk to be posited. Through an examination of these narratives, we consider how early trauma came to be understood as playing an etiologically significant role in the development of suicide risk. Suicide, in these models, has come to be seen as a behavior that has no significant precipitating event, but rather an exceptional precipitating neurochemical state, whose origins are identified in experiences of early traumatic events. We suggest that this is a part of a broader move within contemporary neurosciences and biopsychiatry to see life as post: seeing life as specific form of post-traumatic subjectivity.
ISSN:0269-8897
1474-0664
DOI:10.1017/S0269889721000065