Existential Parallelism and Suicidal Desire: A Clinical Framework for Meaning-Based Assessment and Intervention

Objective: This paper introduces a socio-existential framework for understanding suicidal desire by integrating Existential Parallelism (EP) (Silva Santos, 2025) with the Five-Step Meaning-Centred (M-5) clinical model (Silva Santos & Antúnez, 2025). Whereas theories such as the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide (IPTS) emphasize proximal psychological states, this integration proposes a pre-IPTS layer that explains how late-modern social conditions create antecedent vulnerabilities that can precipitate acute suicidal crises.Method: Through conceptual synthesis, this paper integrates classical and contemporary social theory, existential psychology, and clinical suicidology. The EP–M5 model is grounded in empirical findings on meaninglessness, the influence of digital environments on belongingness, experiential avoidance, perfectionism, and the psychological effects of economic and social precarity.Results: EP identifies a distinct mechanism: a societally induced existential vacuum that leads individuals to rely on inauthentic “parallel paths,” such as performative selfhood, ideological rigidity, consumerism, or achievement-based identities. The collapse of these substitute attachments, such as the implosion of a digital persona or failure of a productivity-based self, functions as an event-based catalyst for suicidal desire. These collapse events rapidly intensify thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness, and psychache, aligning with ideation-to-action frameworks and contemporary clinical observations.Conclusion: The EP–M5 integrated model contributes a clinically actionable perspective by situating suicidal desire within a broader crisis of meaning. It supports a meaning-centered, process-based approach to assessment and intervention, guiding clinicians to identify collapsed life projects, fragile identity structures, and existential disruptions that may underlie acute suicidal crises. This framework offers new targets for clinical treatment, empirical evaluation, and prevention.