Investigating suicide in agriculture globally: A scoping review of methodological approaches and a roadmap for future research

Abstract

Increased attention to suicide in agriculture has led to an increase in interventions informed in part by research on who is most likely to die from suicide, using what means, and for what reason(s). However, the limited understanding of how suicide is studied and the limited engagement in previous studies with theories raises questions about the body of knowledge underpinning these interventions. To assess prevailing methodological approaches and the implications of gaps in our understanding of suicide, we conducted a scoping review of 108 English-language articles. The use of the prevailing health science model to conduct literature reviews also provides a space to reflect on the knowledge that is missed or obscured when using overly positivistic approaches to identify and summarize bodies of literature. We find that the prevailing approaches to studying suicide are methodologically narrow, overplay a limited set of individual-level factors, and underplay key structural-level factors. In line with previous critics, our review hints at the inadequacy of existing interventions given that the existing body of knowledge has not adequately incorporated theoretically important drivers of suicide. Our reflections on current approaches to conducting literature reviews and gaps in the suicide literature provide a roadmap to bridge disciplinary traditions while helping address the knowledge gaps we have identified.