This book makes the provocative case for suicide as 'relatable', in that is both able to be told and an act with which we can empathise, and argues for the importance of seeing suicide as ordinary rather than exceptional.

Writing against the prevailing narrativization of suicide in terms of why it happened, Whitehead turns instead to the questions of when, how, and where, calling attention to suicide’s materiality as well as its materialization. By turns provocative and deeply affecting, this book brings suicide into conversation with the critical medical humanities, extending beyond individual pathology and the medical institution to think about subjective and social perspectives, and to open up the various sites, scenes and interactions with which suicide is associated. Suicide is related forward from the point of death, rather than taking a retrospective view. Combining critical and textual analysis with personal reflection based on her own experience of her sister’s suicide, Whitehead examines the days, months, and years following a death by suicide. This pivoting of attention to what happens in the wake of suicide brings to light the often-surprising ways in which suicide is woven into the everyday places that we inhabit, and in which it is related to all of us, albeit with varying degrees of proximity and kinship.

"The taboos surrounding suicide run deep. I couldn’t speak about my brother’s death for over a decade. This poignant book creates a space to challenge and rethink our own perceptions of suicide and mental health - both as individuals, and as a society as a whole." - Orlando von Einsiedel, Filmmaker

"Weaving personal experience together with extensive research, Relating Suicide bears witness to what it means to live beside suicide. It calls for the need to not only talk more about suicide, but also to listen more to a diversity of voices, and to accommodate for what resides between what we can and cannot know about suicide. This is an absolute must read for students and researchers focusing on the topic of suicide and for those who work in suicide prevention and want to understand suicide in more expansive terms." - Katrina Jaworski, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies, University of South Australia