ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines suicide from the wide lens of culture and how suicide has been viewed over time. It outlines how lethality or the idea of suicide is learned through culture, of how suicide is imitated and how it is contagious. The book looks more closely at the theory of cultural imitation by Gabriel Tarde. Human imitation has sometimes been taken on by many people in one setting. The book reviews the main historical, biological, psychological, psychiatric, sociological, and cultural anthropological approaches to suicide. It provides a new theory of suicide as cultural mimesis, as an idea that is internalized from culture and imitated. Culture is indeed a shared meaning system, what people have in common, and even how people see themselves.
