Citation

Mendelson D, Freckelton I. Int. J. Law Psychiatry 2013; 36(5-6): 343-349.

Affiliation

School of Law, Deakin University, Victoria Australia. Electronic address: Danuta.mendelson@deakin.edu.au.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ijlp.2013.06.005

PMID

23845165

Abstract

Nowadays, suicide is considered essentially a private act, although what constitutes suicide for epidemiological and even clinical purposes in not wholly resolved. Historically, however, at common law, the act of self-killing was a felony with significant religious and legal consequences that impacted upon the deceased person as well as upon his or her whole family. This article identifies the influence of Christian theology, legal theory, and social and medical developments upon attitudes to the felony of self-murder and its definition. It focuses upon the start of more psychologically informed attitudes manifested in landmark court judgments involving exclusion clauses in English mid-nineteenth century insurance contracts. The article illustrates that the law in respect of socially controversial matters does not necessarily develops in a linear progression, nor does it accurately reflect public sentiments. More specifically, the article describes an ongoing definitional conundrum with suicide - whether it should be designated as committed by persons of significantly impaired mental state. The authors observe that in spite of reform to the criminal law of suicide, the civil law relating to suicide has continued to be characterised by ambivalence, ambiguity and significant vestiges of counter-therapeutic moralising.

Language: en