“É preciso ter coragem para deixar essa vida”: o suicídio na Cidade de Bernardino Batista – PB (2007-2017).

Abstract

This research addresses the practice of suicide in the city of Bernardino BatistaPB between the years 2007 and 2017, seeking to understand the conditions that enabled the construction of knowledge and meanings from discourses on the voluntary act of giving up death. In this sense, the study focuses on the Christian discourse in the figure of the Catholic Church, which prohibits this type of death from the 5th century to the present day, as well as the medical discourse that addressed suicide from the 19th century in Brazil and knowledge that contributes to the construction of what we understand about the suicidal act. As a source of analysis, the use of notary documents was made, in which the death records made possible the identification and the means by which death occurred in the Baptist city, as well as the fall book from the police station responsible for the city. Thus, it was intended in this work to discuss suicide and how it was understood and explained as the result of a historical construction.