Uses Michel Foucault's work to analyse the problem of suicide, drawing on both contemporary and historical materials.

Ian Marsh is a Senior Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University. He previously worked in an NHS community mental health team and continues to facilitate suicide prevention training.

Contents; Part I. Introduction and Analytic Strategy: 1. Introduction; 2. Analytic strategy; Part II. The Present: 3. Mapping a contemporary 'Regime of Truth' in relation to suicide; 4. Problematising a contemporary 'Regime of Truth' in relation to suicide; Part III. A History of the Present: 5. Self-accomplished deaths at other times and in other places: the contingency of contemporary truths in relation to suicide; 6. Conditions of possibility for the formation of medical truths of suicide, 1641-1821; 7. Suicide as internal, pathological and medical, Esquirol 1821; 8. The production, dissemination and circulation of medical truths in relation to suicide, 1821-1900; 9. Managing the problem of the suicidal patient: containment, constant watching and restraint; 10. Towards the 'normatively monolithic' - 'psy' discourse and suicide: 1897-1981; 11. The discursive formation of the suicidal subject: Sarah Kane and 4.48 Psychosis, 2000; Part IV. Summary and Conclusions: 12. Summary and conclusions; References; Index.