Ian Marsh is a Senior Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University. He previously worked in an NHS community mental health team and continues to facilitate suicide prevention training.

• Contents; Part I. Introduction and Analytic Strategy: 1. Introduction; 2. Analytic strategy; Part II. The Present: 3. Mapping a contemporary 'Regime of Truth' in relation to suicide; 4. Problematising a contemporary 'Regime of Truth' in relation to suicide; Part III. A History of the Present: 5. Self-accomplished deaths at other times and in other places: the contingency of contemporary truths in relation to suicide; 6. Conditions of possibility for the formation of medical truths of suicide, 1641–1821; 7. Suicide as internal, pathological and medical, Esquirol 1821; 8. The production, dissemination and circulation of medical truths in relation to suicide, 1821–1900; 9. Managing the problem of the suicidal patient: containment, constant watching and restraint; 10. Towards the 'normatively monolithic' – 'psy' discourse and suicide: 1897–1981; 11. The discursive formation of the suicidal subject: Sarah Kane and 4.48 Psychosis, 2000; Part IV. Summary and Conclusions: 12. Summary and conclusions; References; Index.

'This book is an excellent demonstration of both the utility and limits of Foucauldian methodologies for understanding complex social, scientific, health problems like suicide. This text will be useful to practitioners and students in mental health and other social sciences who have an interest in operationalizing Foucauldian theories to understand and develop alternative solutions to social problems.' Oona Morrow, Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare