Suicides in a Brazilian public university: documentary analysis of occurrences from 1990 to 2023*Abstract
This study aims to analyze suicide deaths in a public university in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 1990 to 2023. It conducted documentary analysis of 32 suicide occurrences in the university. As a result, the study presents two main categories: Numbers that speak of time and pain: the portrayal of suicide in university settings, which demonstrates that suicide cannot be understood solely as a number, but as an expression of a web of pains that manifest in the educational context recurrently over time; and Pain that speaks of people: the singularity of student distress, which shows occurrences with similar characteristics, with the majority of people being associated with the university, consisting of men, especially young ones aged 20 to 25 years, predominantly in Humanities programs. The theoretical approach based on Frantz Fanon and Émile Durkheim enabled a shift from the idea of suicide as a phenomenon exclusively related to individual vulnerability to an understanding of suicide as a sociogenic phenomenon and as a social fact, according to the effect of social, economic, and cultural structures that inform student life. The study also problematizes the limitations of the “Janeiro Branco” (White January) and “Setembro Amarelo” (Yellow September) campaign-based models adopted in Brazil, which tend to individualize social distress. Suicide in university settings expresses serious mental health indicators and reinforces the need for student distress no longer being made invisible and for universities to constitute spaces of care, solidarity, and inclusion of collective coping strategies.
Keywords:
Suicide; University; Mental health; Education
Resumo
Trata-se de um estudo que objetiva analisar as mortes por suicídio em uma universidade pública do estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, no período de 1990 a 2023. Foi empreendida análise documental de 32 ocorrências de suicídio na universidade. Como resultados, o estudo apresenta duas categorias principais: Números que falam de tempo e de dor: o retrato do suicídio no contexto universitário, que demonstra que o suicídio não pode ser compreendido apenas como número, mas como expressão de uma trama de dores que se manifestam no contexto educacional de forma recorrente ao longo do tempo; e Dor que fala de pessoas: a singularidade do sofrimento estudantil, que evidencia ocorrências com características semelhantes, sendo a maioria de pessoas vinculadas à universidade, composta por homens, especialmente jovens entre 20 e 25 anos, com predomínio nos cursos de humanas. A aproximação teórica com Frantz Fanon e Émile Durkheim possibilitou o deslocamento da ideia de suicídio como fenômeno exclusivo da vulnerabilidade individual para uma compreensão como fenômeno sociogênico e como um Fato social, segundo o efeito das estruturas sociais, econômicas e culturais que moldam a vida estudantil. O estudo ainda problematiza as limitações dos modelos campanhistas de Janeiro Branco e Setembro Amarelo adotados no Brasil, que tendem a individualizar o sofrimento social. O suicídio no ambiente universitário expressa indicadores graves de saúde mental e reforça a necessidade de que o sofrimento estudantil não seja invisibilizado, mas que a universidade se constitua como espaço de cuidado, solidariedade e inclusão de estratégias coletivas de enfrentamento.
Palavras-chave:
Suicídio; Universidade; Saúde mental; Educação
Introduction
Suicide in the university setting poses urgent challenges for the field of education, including the recognition that education is not only a fundamental right but also part of the social determinants of health. This means understanding it in a broader sense as a structural determinant of living conditions, with direct repercussions on people’s health. Thus, understanding the university as a constitutive part of the right to education - and, therefore, of the right to health as well - enables the recognition of these rights as indissociable dimensions (Brasil, 2017).
In the field of rights, public university students are part of a small fraction in Brazil, since social inequality rates in the country are alarming. Estimates indicate that 9.9 million people are attending higher education in Brazil. This number demonstrates that the vast majority of Brazilian society does not have its right to education guaranteed (Brasil, 2024). Of those who manage to access a university, 11.4% attend public universities, and 88.6% attend private institutions. Even if a small portion manages to enter a public university, there are known major barriers both for student access and student retention, which often makes this university journey a producer of distress (Brasil, 2024).
Furthermore, it is important to note that public higher education has recently undergone much deterioration and dismantling, thereby compromising the entire system. With the precarization of the working conditions of professors and workers in this field, the entire community feels these effects in some way, thus affecting not only the education but also the coexistence in university settings (Silva; Oliveira; Pinho, 2024).
Considering that university and higher education constitute an essential right and are part of people’s existential territory, there is no denying that all the political challenges faced by the university - both on a macrostructural scale and in its internal context - reinforce that it is not an island isolated from society. These and other challenges, stemming from the capitalist way of life, impact bodies and can invariably be expressed as psychological distress in the academic setting (Araújo; Macedo, 2022).
Thus, this study is based on the concept of sociogenesis, of the Martinican Frantz Fanon (2020), to oppose the idea that psychic distress would be intrinsic in and restricted to the biological functioning of individuals. On the contrary, Fanon leads us to understand distress as a collective web, affected by social, economic, and political dimensions. In the educational context, this approach allows for the consideration that distress is not limited to the students’ individual experience, as if it were a cause and effect of itself; it is also related to determinants present in the university and in life in society. Therefore, it is a complex phenomenon that requires integration between health care, education, culture, leisure, and other political dimensions of life.
Another reference that helps broaden this debate is the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (2024), a scholar of the suicide issue who indicates an expanded conception of the nature of this type of distress. Durkheim texts infer that suicide should not be explained solely from a psychological perspective, but should be understood as a social fact, i.e., as a collective phenomenon, even if it appears to be of an individual order.
Hence, thinking about the suicide issue would be thinking about a collective issue, based on the assumption that the university is a setting for coexistence and education, integrated into the city and society. Thus, education is built through relationships, and the university setting has the potential to be both a producer of life and a producer of distress. Therefore, this study considers that suicide cases in this context should be interpreted as a warning about possible failures in the educational project. If education has the fundamental purpose of humanizing and expanding existences, promoting life processes, such tragedies represent a direct contradiction (Leão; Ianni; Goto, 2019).
Notably, suicide has been associated with a public health issue since the 2000s in Brazil, when the Ministry of Health (MS) introduced a political agenda that connects suicide and health care to the idea of epidemiology and prevention (Gonçalves, 2022). However, suicide events occurring in educational settings prompt a reconsideration of educational practice and a problematization of the interrelations that may contribute to triggering distress and that prevent the university from completely fulfilling its educational role.
Our debate is situated in the analysis of data from the conjuncture and educational context of a public university in the state of Rio de Janeiro, which concentrates an expressive mark of distress, showing the concrete reality of the students and of their educational routine. Considering the above, we should ask: what is the responsibility of the State, governments, professors, workers, students, university administration, health care services, and society as a whole for suicide cases in the academic setting?
Furthermore, it is necessary to reflect on whether the very educational structure would not be a contributing factor so the university, rather than being a care and learning space, ends up becoming an oppression, distress, and death setting. The study by Turner, Leno, and Keller (2013) shows that suicide is the leading cause of death among university students and notes that, although there is extensive epidemiological data on suicide mortality in the general population, a significant knowledge gap still persists as to the academic context. Similarly, Rios (2019) notes that this invisibility of the issue can occur due to the perception of suicide as a social taboo, which in turn hinders the circulation of information in university settings.
This finding shows the limitations of higher education in addressing the issue of suicide in the academic community, which, rather than giving visibility to the problem, often conceals it by collective pacts of silence. However, on the other hand, the World Health Organization (WHO, 2021a) emphasizes that only by shedding light on suicide cases it is possible to build unique strategies that support decision-making processes and promote the identification of people in situations of intense vulnerability.
For a reflective and analytical approach to the phenomenon of suicide in educational settings, this study sought to analyze death cases in a public university in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 1990 to 2023.
Methods
This is a qualitative, descriptive, and retrospective study, linked to the Incentive Program for Scientific, Technical, and Artistic Production (Programa de Incentivo à Produção Científica, Técnica e Artística, Prociência) of a public university in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The interest in the issue arose from the authors’ experiences as educators and as mobilizers for the construction of the university’s Mental Health Policy.
The university under analysis is one of the largest and most prestigious in Brazil and in Latin America, with 20 campuses and external units. Across all campuses, the university has a total of 106 undergraduate programs, 7 master’s programs, 46 doctoral programs, 3,332 professors, 5,616 staff members, 32.746 students, and five health care units. For purposes of territorial understanding, the campuses are located in Metropolitan Health Area I and in programmatic area 2.2, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. The campuses are also used for the traversal of the external community that crosses them to access other spaces in the city and public transportation. Around 20,000 people per day and 7 million people per year circulate through the university.
Data collection occurred from December 2023 to June 2024, following authorization from the campus administration and approval from the Research Ethics Committee, with Certificate of Presentation for Ethical Appreciation (CAAE) No. 71229123.3.0000.5282 and opinion No. 6.295.072, in compliance with the ethical principles set forth in Resolutions No. 466, of December 12, 2012, and No. 510, of April 7, 2016, of the National Health Council (Brasil, 2013, 2016).
The data were collected by documentary survey of 127 records from April 1990 to December 2023 in the archived occurences of the Campus Security Division (DISEG-CAMPUS). These records were chosen because they were entered by the workers who first identified situations related to mental health (of students or not) in the university and are the only records that document the details of such facts. The time frame was determined by the availability of records, and we found no occurrences prior to 1990. Documentary analysis is a technique that investigates primary and documentary sources, which, in the words of Cellard (2012), refer to any trace of the past that serves as proof.
Thus, for an adequate understanding of the issue, the study adopted a plan for evaluating the documents according to the types of situations related to mental health. They were divided into completed suicide, suicide risks (ideation, planning, and attempts), and mental health crises, according to the following flow: systematic reading of the archived occurrences; identification of occurrences related to mental health issues; categorization of occurrence types; systematic reading of occurrences and preparation of graphs.
After classifying the occurrences, all data configured as completed suicide were separated, and then the research variables were recorded in an Excel® spreadsheet. Thus, the data for all suicides that occurred in the university were separated and recorded. The collected data were processed individually, the information from the systematic reading of each occurrence was entered in numerical sequence into the spreadsheet. After the spreadsheet was prepared, the data were transformed into graphs for better visualization of the findings and construction of the profile of suicide situations that occur in the university.
The study presents some limitations, mainly due to the poor systematization of records made by the security team and the lack of complete information about suicide attempts, such as age and race/skin color, due to the non-location of the documents of the people involved. Thus, all suicide records were included in the analysis, even though some indicators in this category were not properly filled in in the reports.
Results
The study presents as results the description of suicide cases that occurred in university settings in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 1990 to 2023. The cases were analyzed according to the following variables: temporal evolution of occurrences and unique characteristics associated with the academic setting.
Regarding temporal evolution of completed suicide cases in the university setting, it was found that in the studied period (1990 to 2023) there were 32 occurrences. The years 2007, 2008, 2013, 2018, and 2022 saw the largest increases, with three deaths each. The analysis of the temporal trajectory of suicide rates shows a certain pattern of frequency that ranges from one to three deaths per year. Notably, there was a pattern of one death per year for seven consecutive years (1992-2002) and an increasing trend from 2007 onwards. Also, note that all deaths were due to falls from high floors of university buildings.
The temporal evolution of suicide deaths in the universities shows that the significant numbers over more than three decades can reflect distress processes that span time and generations, demonstrating the collective and institutional vulnerability of education and the symbolic relationship between suicide and the academic space, with the university being not only the setting of the deaths but also a place of profound distressing experiences over time.
The days with the largest increases in suicides in campus recorded by security personnel were Thursday (N = 11) and Tuesday (N = 7). Sunday was included due to the fact that the university is a venue for civil service entrance exams and other exams. Regarding time of the occurrences, the study shows that the morning period (N = 16) was the most chosen by people for suicide, followed by the afternoon (N = 11) and night (N = 5). The data indicate that situations related to suicide occur throughout the operating hours of the campuses.
As for the months, the study showed that most suicides in the university occurred in March (N = 4), April (N = 4), and September (N = 4). Secondly, the months of June (N = 3), August (N = 3), and October (N = 3). The other months presented an average of two occurrences each. January had the lowest number of occurrences, which is believed to be due to university holidays. When evaluating the monthly suicide rate, it is observed that the university had occurrences in all months of the year, demonstrating a certain temporal trend.
The results reinforce the idea that suicide in this educational setting is not a casual phenomenon and should not be interpreted solely as a personal decision. A frequency rhythm is noted that may be associated with institutional dynamics, concurring with a higher workload of academic activities, tests, and deadlines. The data also show that suicide is a routine issue, meaning that it occurs at all times, days, and months of the year, with greater or lesser frequency.
Regarding unique characteristics associated with the academic context, the records show that most people who commit suicide in the university are part of the very academic community (N = 19). The program with the highest frequency of occurrence was Letters [language and literature studies] (N = 3). The descriptive analysis of the recorded data showed a predominance of humanities programs, such as Philosophy (N = 1), Geography (N = 1), Languages (N = 2), Letters (N = 3), Human Sciences (N = 1), Arts (N = 1), Social Work (N = 1), and Law (N = 1).
The frequency of suicide cases in the academic community reinforces the profound relationship between distress and the university life routine. Such frequency represents not a mere numerical coincidence, but the expression of subjective and collective experiences of distress that are structured within the university.
Regarding the age of the people, it was found that the group aged 20 to 25 years had the highest occurrence (N = 7), followed by the group aged over 46 years (N = 4). Analysis of suicide rates in occurrences in which age was recorded shows increased suicide risk among people aged 20 to 25 and over 46 years.
As for the predominance of suicides related to people’s gender, the study shows that men are the majority of people who commit suicide in universities. In total, there were 19 men and 12 women. In one occurrence, the person’s gender was not identified.
The data suggest that suicide in universities affects different age groups, but there is a predominance in young adults. The data also show that the gender issue is an important analytical element for psychological distress in university settings and modes of suicide, represented by the higher increase in male deaths.
This study showed the temporal evolution of suicide occurrences and the unique characteristics associated with the academic context of a public university in Rio de Janeiro. These data gave rise to two main categories: Numbers that speak of time and pain: the portrayal of suicide in university settings and Pain that speaks of people: the singularity of student distress.
Discussion
Numbers that speak of time and pain: the portrayal of suicide in university settings
The data gathered by this study covers suicide deaths from 1990 to 2023 and shows a frequency pattern ranging from one to three cases per year, with a growth trend in the last 16 years. It was also observed that, in this time frame, suicides occurred on all days of the week, in all months of the year, and in all periods of the day, although with distinct frequencies.
The data on suicides in universities relate to broader suicide indicators. Brazil is the eighth country in the world in absolute number of suicide cases (WHO, 2017). Despite the global decrease in the number of suicides from 2000 to 2019, the South America saw a 17% increase, and Brazil is one of the countries with the highest increment (WHO, 2021b). Specifically in the state of Rio de Janeiro, it is noted that suicides have increased by 40% in the last 10 years, with a gradual growth since 2014. Regarding the state’s regions, in the 2018-2019 biennium, the so-called Metropolitan Area I, which includes the city of Rio de Janeiro, had the highest number of suicides. If all suicide cases from the other regions of the state of Rio de Janeiro are added together, they do not reach the number of suicides in the Metropolitan Area I (Rio de Janeiro, 2018).
These data indicate that suicides in universities are not disconnected from the national, state, regional, and local contexts in terms of prevalence. However, suicide presents a specificity in the academic community, as noted by Kaggwa et al. (2022) and Turner, Leno, and Keller (2013), who indicate it as one of the main causes of death among university students, preceded only by accidental injuries.
Thus, the numbers presented by this study speak of time and pain; that is, the high suicide rates in university settings reflect that distress experiences extend over time and cannot be silenced or neglected, as if this were not an educational issue. This fact is explained by the scarcity of records in the university under study: only security guards recorded suicides in occurrence books, which denotes a total invisibility of these indicators under analysis here.
The results show over three decades of expression of a certain collective and institutional deficiency of the educational system. This numerical representation - far from being a representation of all educational settings - can reveal a certain symbolic dimension of the erasure of the psychological distress experience in universities. Therefore, the occurrence pattern demonstrates that the episodes remain regular, suggesting a trend of stability in incidence over time; that is, suicide is present in educational settings. This fact underscores the need for community-oriented care strategies to be continuous practices, since isolated initiatives, such as campaigns focused only on the months of January and September (White January and Yellow September, respectively), may not be able to encompass the complexity and multiplicity of factors involved in the issue (Lôbo et al., 2024).
However, these initiatives are not combined with in-depth discussion. It is crucial to note a paradox: alongside these local initiatives, there is a growing logic of medicalization of psychological distress by the health care field. This perspective tends to reduce the complexities of life and mental health to mere psychiatric disorders, giving the issue a strictly pathological and individual character (Albuquerque, 2021).
This view has multiple inherent problems: it reinforces stigmas, trivializes diagnoses, and individualizes pain. Thus, there is a search for individualized and localized solutions for a malaise that is, in essence, collective. The focus on individual solutions ends up obscuring the structural roots of the issue, leaving aside the necessary discussion about the precarious forms of life imposed by the neoliberal logic of capitalism, which are often in the genesis of this distress in universities (Albuquerque, 2021).
Notably, the perception of suicide as a social taboo, which limits the dissemination of information and discussion on the issue, directly affects the issue of deaths in university settings (Rios, 2019). The effect is significant, because, the silence of the academic community leads to a reduced power for action and the formulation of both pedagogical and care-related proposals. Thus, the collective silence pact is perpetuated within the university sphere.
Therefore, suicide in university settings - when there is data on event recurrence and linearity over the years - can be an important health indicator for the academic population. Hence, understanding the phenomenon is essential for defining priorities, developing strategies, and designing policies geared toward addressing the issue in universities.
If it is undeniable that suicide is a relevant collective and social issue in the field of education, then it is imperative, as an opposition to the individualization of suicide in universities, the presence of references that take the path opposite to that of blaming people for their actions and desires, as in traditional and campaign-based psychiatry. We highlight two important references for this discussion: the psychiatrist and anticolonial philosopher Frantz Fanon, and Émile Durkheim, a French sociologist considered one of the important thinkers on suicide as a social phenomenon.
Fanon, through the works Black Skin, White Masks (2008), The Wretched of the Earth (1963), and The Psychiatric Writings from Alienation and Freedom (2020), addresses the structural and colonial oppression that profoundly informs human subjectivities. The author, through the concept of the sociogenesis of psychic distress, helps us reflect on the phenomenon of suicide in university settings from the perspective of the social, political, and economic conditions that affect bodies (Fanon, 1963). In this case, suicide would be a social, systemic effect, and not just a clinical, psychiatric effect; that is, a symptom of oppressive conditions that combine with the productivity pressures inherent in the capitalist system - so well embraced by the educational system.
This thought expands the collective dimension of mental health care, as, when the university is the setting chosen by people for suicide, as reported in this study, the entire community receives the responsibility of being a solidarity and collective care network. This reverses the order from devaluation of identity and alienation about personal feelings (wanting to die) to a deep social commitment toward living well. According to Fanon (2020), psychic distress reflects the broader social pain, and the author notes collective solutions that acknowledge that the issue belongs to everyone.
Martins et al. (2025) argue that the conjuncture of suicide in universities is a result of the neoliberal advancement, which attacks the public system to turn it into a commodity, prioritizing capitalist profit over the right to education. This argument dialogues with Fanon (2020) when discussing the effects of colonialism and capitalism on existences.
Consistently, Émile Durkheim (2024) notes that individual behavior often reflects collective patterns. The author introduces the concept of social fact; that is, all social norms, values, and demands that exert some form of pressure on people. Changes in these normative patterns can increase or decrease the incidence of suicides.
When we reflect on suicide in the field of education, the pressures noted by Durkheim can also be identified in the university context. The study of Mota, Pimentel, and Mota (2023) notes that such pressures can manifest in different forms, such as in overload of assignments and exams, excessive demands from the faculty, tensions in relationships between students, concerns about entering the work market, and even self-imposed pressure.
Thus, each person in the university setting has completely different stories, backgrounds, and experiences, and when such stories finally manage to circulate in these spaces, there is the feeling of an intense pressure for good grades, for no failures or absences, and for life outside college not affecting performance, as if life were an eternal checklist with the aim of meeting all imposed requirements. The result, however, can end up being intense distress.
Far from aiming to provide simple answers and digressions on the phenomenon, which is complex by nature, this study seeks to reflect on numbers that speak of time and pain, as reconstructed portrayals of the invisible distress permanently present in the university context.
Pain that speaks of people: the singularity of student distress
In the previous section, the numbers somehow expressed the pains felt and experienced in the university spaces over time and that culminated in suicide. However, these pains portray people and their connections with the university, which makes the issue simultaneously specific, singular, and collective.
The study shows that, regarding the people’s connection to the university, more than half were from the academic community (N = 19). As for the specific issue of suicide among university students, scientific production is still incipient, focusing on prevalence studies of suicidal behavior and ideation (Rosario-Williams; Kaur; Miranda, 2021). This gap justifies studies aiming to obtain further knowledge about suicide among this population.
The data also provided insights into the relations between the programs and the recurrence of suicides. The programs with the highest frequency of occurrence were in the humanities, such as Letters, Philosophy, Geography, Languages, Human Sciences, Arts, Social Work, and Law. Consistently, the study of Pereira and Cardoso (2015) suggests that psychological distress is more prevalent in students of fields related to human beings. The study of Piva (2025) aligns with the findings by noting the dramatic situation experienced in the University of São Paulo (USP), showing the occurrence of several suicide cases, particularly in humanities departments, such as the School of Philosophy, Letters, and Human Sciences (FFLCH).
Regarding the age of the people, the predominant profile in the occurrences was young people, in the age range between 20 and 25 years, followed by the group aged over 46 years: these data are similar to those in the national and global scientific literature. The studies show two predominant age groups: young people and older adults. Suicide in youth is of particular interest when the subject is suicide in universities, as this phase of life is that in which higher education is entered, meaning this is the phase in which individuals are making choices and defining life projects (OPS, 2021).
In her studies, psychoanalyst Leitão (2017) mentions that preparation for adult life can exacerbate certain feelings and cause psychic disorganization. The author clarifies that psychic disorders are often aggravated by loneliness, the lack of a strong support network, and the construction of weak and superficial bonds. The search for meaning in life, in addition to a culture that encourages performance and competition, are also aggravating factors. These factors not only threaten psychosocial health but also expose young people to various challenges, potentially leading them to wanting to die.
Regarding the gender of the people, the data from this research are also consistent with an ecological study on suicide notifications, hospitalizations, and mortality between 2011 and 2022, which showed that suicide among men was almost four times more frequent than among women in 2022, and that the highest suicide rates occurred in the age group above 25 years (Alves et al., 2022).
Baére and Zanello (2020) clarify that the high suicide rate among men is a serious symptom of how machismo also harms them. The patriarchal model of masculinity, which demands constant strength and rejects vulnerability, creates an emotional armor that suffocates and isolates.
These data on suicide among men in university underscore the urgency of discussing gender issues. The issue should be analyzed considering studies that help challenge the current social structures, centered on a normative male figure. The normativity of this patriarchal, white, aesthetically standardized, heterosexual, and elitist system imposes on society a machismo that oppresses women and, simultaneously, imprisons men in the idea of an unbreakable strength (Butler, 2015). In this process, fundamental human attributes, such as sensitivity, are devalued and pejoratively labeled as women’s stuff. Thus, women are denied their strength, while men are denied their vulnerability, dehumanizing both experiences.
In the academic context, this social expectation that men exhibit less vulnerability - even amid significant psychological distress - has fatal consequences. By inhibiting the search for help, macho culture directly contributes to men resorting to suicide more than women. In contrast, women’s greater propensity to express distress and seek support, often stereotyped as complaining, can be reinterpreted as an expertise developed in life preservation strategies.
These coefficients for suicide mortality among men compared to women is a well-documented fact in general studies in Brazil (Alves et al., 2024; Brasil, 2021; Dantas et al., 2023; Rio de Janeiro, 2023) and worldwide (Marconi et al., 2023; OPS, 2021). This gender difference is generally attributed to the use of more lethal suicide methods (such as jumping), greater aggressiveness, and a stronger intention to die among men, which are intrinsically related to the macho construction in the expression of distress.
The findings from this study relate to the results of a study in Japan that aimed to identify trends and factors associated with suicidal ideation and mortality among students between 2007 and 2022. The study showed a much higher number of suicides among male students (5,179) than among female students (1,880). This shows that suicides among university students follow the general pattern of gender-related deaths (Okada et al., 2023).
With these findings, the research data situate universities at the center of a goal that is also global: reducing the number of suicide deaths, in order to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and the WHO Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2030 (OPS, 2021).
As pointed out in Suicide Worldwide in 2019: global health estimates (WHO, 2021a), the regular recording and monitoring of suicide situations are effective means of understanding the scope of the issue and creating unique and local strategies that support decision-making, especially in tracing specific groups at risk of suicide, such as those related to gender, age, programs, and means of suicide.
Thus, understanding the phenomenon of suicide in university settings should be much more focused on people and their relations with the university than on a direct association with mental disorders or a certain biological deregulation of the body in distress. When the objective is to understand people’s context, this understanding should include the deep social and historical determinants that underlie human suffering, as taught by Fanon and Durkheim.
Final considerations
This study had the objective of analyzing the cases of death in a public university in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between 1990 and 2023. The results showed that suicide in a university setting cannot be understood as a number and an isolated fact, circumscribed to the person in an individualized manner, but rather as an expression of a web of pains and distresses that relate complex social and institutional dynamics specific to the educational context over time, being an issue that education needs to address and no longer make invisible. Thus, the recurrence and linearity of suicides in a given university provide insights that the field of education should not be considered solely as a space for education, but also as a setting for profound psychic experiences, which demand solidarity, affection, and collective care.
Furthermore, the data led us to reflect that the pains experienced over time in the researched university culminated in the deaths of people. These people had similar characteristics and were mostly associated with the university, men, especially young ones aged between 20 and 25 years. The data showed that suicide deaths are manifested differently between humanities programs and reinforce the need for an analysis of gender issues that affect the experience of distress.
The theoretical reflection proposed by Fanon and Durkheim and by studies that are relevant in the field of education enabled a shift from the idea of suicide as a phenomenon that is exclusive to individual vulnerability and strictly related to mental disorders to a broader understanding of suicide as a sociogenic phenomenon, as an effect of the social, economic, and cultural structures that inform student life. This approach problematizes the campaign-based models adopted in Brazil, which tend to individualize and pathologize social distress.
Finally, the study indicates the need to view suicide in universities as a collective issue, demanding coordinated initiative of the academic community with public mental health policies, also including pedagogical interventions that foster listening to distress and care of the community itself. It is imperative that student distress is no longer made invisible and that universities constitute spaces of care, solidarity, and promotion of living well, reversing the naturalization of pain and including collective coping strategies.
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1
Disponibilidade de dados: Todo o conjunto de dados que dá suporte aos resultados deste estudo foi publicado no próprio artigo.
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2
Agradecimentos: à Diretoria Geral de Segurança (DEGSEG) e ao Comitê de Política de Saúde Mental e Atenção Psicossocial (COMAPS) da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ).
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Editor:
Profa. Dra. Viviane Potenza Guimarães Pinheiro Fonseca
Disponibilidade de dados: Todo o conjunto de dados que dá suporte aos resultados deste estudo foi publicado no próprio artigo.
