How marital factors lead towards suicide and its association with gender among married people: an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA)

Abstract

The current study titled how marital factors lead towards suicide and its association with gender among married people: an interpretative phenomenological analysis is conducted to theorize the role of marital factors in leading towards suicide analyzing the lived experiences of respondents. This study aimed at discerning the personal meaning of experience of suicide in context of marital relationship narrated by the respondents of the study instead of posing already set theories in case scenarios of respondents. The theory is derived by personal meanings and experiences of respondents in accord with their feelings and perception. The task of the analyst was to analyze the phenomenon explained by the participants in raw form and then to give interpretation of the research data and the respondent being researched. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA was used as method and analysis both. In-depth unstructured interviews were conducted and analysis of the interview transcripts along was done as per IPA guidelines. The study sample constituted 2 participants being 1 male and 1 female for gender comparison. The study analysis revealed a pattern of recurrent super-ordinate themes that appeared as leading factors towards suicide among married people; precisely respondents included in the study. These themes seemed to have personal meaning, significance and function for each respondent in context of suicide being in marital relationship. The super-ordinate themes entailing underlying related constituent themes emerged in the analysis of current study results are suicide as a mean of communication (silence as a language, need to be heard), being solo giver, lack of support (need for affection, need for emotional support), incompatibility, attributes of spouse (stubbornness/rigidity, authoritative/dominating attitude, provocative/igniting behavior, carelessness, spouse viewed as an animal), being in abusive relationship (verbal, physical and emotional, blaming attitude of spouse), having a liar partner, lack of shelter/insecurity (insecurity of relations, immodest character of partner), second marriage, intense hurt, helplessness/suicide being only option (last resort), and failure of expectations. There appeared commonalities as well as differences in both respondent cases and on part of gender compare and contrast alike.