Between the 1960s and 1980s, suicide was frequently discussed as a major social issue in the Slovenian public sphere, leading to the establishment of the idea of Slovenians as a "suicide nation"." In her book "Illness as Metaphor"," Susan Sontag examines how society uses illness as a metaphor for moral, psychological and political conditions, often resulting in the stigmatisation of patients. This perspective is valuable for understanding the representations of suicide in socialist Slovenia. This paper analyses the influence of the metaphor of the "nation of suicides" on political thought and discourse in socialist Slovenia. It analyses how intellectuals used or rejected this idea in their debates and how they adapted expert discussions and statistics to their political agenda. The concept of suicide as a "Slovenian problem" emerged in the late 1960s and was supported by statistics and high-profile cases of suicide among young people from prominent cultural and political families. Among the prominent intellectuals who addressed suicide as a Slovenian problem were Jože Javoršek and Niko Grafenauer. Javoršek, an advocate of Yugoslav socialism, regarded suicide as a symptom of social pathologies that jeopardised the socialist project. He criticised phenomenological philosophy, neo-avant-garde art, pettybourgeois values and the Catholic and Habsburg tradition as harmful to socialism. Conversely, Grafenauer used the metaphor of Slovenian suicide to criticise socialist authority and saw suicides as a consequence of the tension between socialist society and the individual goal. He criticised both the League of Communists and the Catholic Church for restricting individualism. Interestingly, both intellectuals shared a misogynistic attitude. Javoršek condemned contraception and abortion, while Grafenauer criticised the high employment rate of women, which in his opinion led to a lack of family upbringing. Despite their different political approaches, Javoršek and Grafenauer shared a critical attitude towards the Catholic Church and an ethnocentric interpretation of the suicide phenomenon.