Dr Scott Fitzpatrick

The prevention and relief of suffering has long been a core medical concern. But while this is a laudable goal, some question whether medicine can, or should, aim for a world without pain, sadness, anxiety, despair or uncertainty. To explore these issues, we invited experts from six of the world¿s major faith traditions to address the following question. Is there value in suffering? And is something lost in the prevention and/or relief of suffering? While each of the perspectives provided maintains that suffering should be alleviated and that medicine¿s proper role is to prevent and relieve suffering by ethical means, it is also apparent that questions regarding the meaning and value of suffering are beyond the realm of medicine. These perspectives suggest that medicine and bioethics have much to gain from respectful consideration of religious discourse surrounding suffering.

Work remains a significant source of illness, injury, and death in developed countries. In Australia, for example, over 2,000 people die from work-related causes each year, with heavy social, economic, and personal costs (Safe Work Australia, 2013a). Most die as a result of work-related disease. However, many die from trauma. In 2012, 223 workers were fatally injured in Australia and in the United States the figure was 4,383 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014; Safe Work Australia, 2013b). Apart from the immediate tragedy of each worker¿s death, these deaths affect the victim¿s immediate family, wider family, friends, and co-workers. It has been estimated that, on average, every death has an impact on at least 20 other people (Dyregrov, Nordanger, & Dyregrov, 2003), especially when the deceased had several families, which is an increasingly common phenomenon (OECD, 2014). Little is known, however, about how regulatory responses following a traumatic workplace fatality meet the needs of surviving families. With a focus on the coronial investigation, this article provides information about the regulatory responses to a traumatic workplace fatality and examines how various organizations involved in the coronial process following the death viewed its ability to accommodate the needs and wishes of surviving families.

The stories of suicide attempt survivors are gaining broader currency in suicide prevention where they have the potential to provide privileged insights into experiences of suicide, strengthen prevention and intervention measures, and reduce discrimination and stigmatization. Stories of suicide, however, have a double-edged power insofar as their benefits are counterweighted by a number of acknowledged harms. Drawing on the literatures and methods of narrative, and in particular, narrative approaches to bioethics, I contend that suicide prevention organizations make possible yet constrain the creation of personal stories of suicide, shaping the discursive meanings of public stories of suicide while setting limits on which stories are valued, legitimized, and rendered intelligible. Personal stories of suicide serve as important sites of meaning-making, power, and social identity, yet they also reproduce and normalize particular ways of thinking, acting, and communicating that reinforce the institutional logics of suicidology. These have ethical and political force as they help to frame the ways suicide is understood, the ways it is subjectively experienced, and the ways it is responded to.

As one component of a broader social and normative response to the problem of suicide, scientism served to minimize sociopolitical and religious conflict around the issue. As such, it embodied, and continues to embody, a number of interests and values, as well as serving important social functions. It is thus comparable with other normative frameworks and can be appraised, from an ethical perspective, in light of these values, interests, and functions. This work examines the key values, interests, and functions of scientism in suicidology and argues that although scientism has had some social benefit, it primarily serves to maintain political and professional interests and has damaging implications for suicide research and prevention.