[Self-destructive behaviour and the health of a nation: suicide as an indicator of social well-being through its use by french psychiatry (1800-1856)].

A common practice in our socio-cultural context is that of using suicide rates as an indicator of the degree of well-being enjoyed by members of society. This article aims to investigate the origins of this practice and, through this, highlight some of the problems inherent in this method to interpreting the phenomenon of self-destruction. To this end, we shall explore the way in which a group of professionals, who were pioneers in interpreting suicide in this way and in evaluating its incidence rate--the French psychiatrists of the first half of the last century--tackled the question of the existence of deviant behaviour, (as is self-destruction) in society. At the same time we shall study how the alienists became experts in the suicide phenomenon, and shall aim to illustrate the way in which their interpretations of what this meant was conditioned as much by the ideas on madness which they advocated, as by the economic, political, social and cultural context in which the psychiatrists carried out their work.