Disability and suicidal ideation among Indigenous adults in Canada: Cultural resources as contingencies

Objectives The present study asks: Is disability associated with suicidal ideation among Indigenous adults in Canada? And if so, do cultural resources—as measured by cultural identity affect, cultural group belonging, cultural engagement, and cultural exploration—modify this association? Methods Data were from a nationally representative sample of First Nations peoples living off-reserve, Métis, and Inuit across […]

Understanding suicide from an Indigenous cultural lens: Insights from Elders in Canada

In this study, Indigenous Elders in Canada were interviewed to explore their conceptualizations of death and dying, particularly in relation to suicide. Through reflexive thematic analysis, three key themes were developed: Indigenous conceptions of death and dying, Christian influences on views of suicide, and indirect suicide. The theme of Indigenous conceptualizations of death and dying […]

Centering community strengths and resisting structural racism to prevent youth suicide: Learning from American Indian and Alaska Native communities

The persistence of extreme suicide disparities in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth signals a severe health inequity with distinct associations to a colonial experience of historical and on-going cultural, social, economic, and political oppression. To address this complex issue, we describe three AI/AN suicide prevention efforts that illustrate how strengths-based community interventions across […]

Development of “CULTURE FORWARD: A strengths and culture-based tool to protect our native youth from suicide”

Objective: Indigenous knowledge and practices promote American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN; Native) communities’ health and well-being. Historical losses and continued oppression have resulted in disproportionately higher AI/AN youth suicide rates. This article describes the development of a new national resource guide titled “CULTURE FORWARD” for tribal leaders and stakeholders to support youth suicide prevention efforts through […]

Centering Indigenous knowledges and worldviews: Applying the Indigenist ecological systems model to youth mental health and wellness research and programs

Globally, Indigenous communities, leaders, mental health providers, and scholars have called for strengths-based approaches to mental health that align with Indigenous and holistic concepts of health and wellness. We applied the Indigenist Ecological Systems Model to strengths-based case examples of Indigenous youth mental health and wellness work occurring in CANZUS (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and […]

A cultural script for suicide among white men in the Mountain West region of the United States

The states of the Mountain West region of the United States consistently have the highest rates of suicide in the country, a pattern particularly pronounced in older White men. Although multiple constructs have been proposed to explain this long-standing pattern, including social isolation, cultural values, and psychopathology, relatively little research has been conducted to directly […]

Life is precious: A quasi-experimental study of a community-based program to prevent suicide among Latina adolescents in New York City

Introduction Rising rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) among U.S. Latina adolescents urgently need attention. Life is Precious (LIP) is a culturally responsive, community-based, afterschool-model program offering wellness-support services to supplement outpatient mental health treatment for Latina adolescents experiencing STB’s. This 12-month quasi-experimental pilot study explored LIP’s impact on clinical outcomes. Methods Latina adolescents […]

Cultural Consensus Modeling to identify culturally relevant reasons for and against suicide among Black adolescents

Introduction The development of evidence-based treatments relies on accurate theoretical frameworks sensitive to the lived realities of the populations from which they are derived. Yet, the perspectives of Black youth are vastly underrepresented in extant theories of suicidal behavior. Cultural Consensus Modeling provides an evidence-based approach for developing a culturally informed understanding of suicide risk […]

Cultural family processes, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation: A longitudinal study of Asian American youths

Introduction This prospective study examined the direct and interactive effects of depressive symptoms and cultural family processes (i.e., intergenerational cultural conflict, academic parental control, cultural socialization parenting) on Asian American youths’ suicidal ideation from adolescence to young adulthood. Methods We utilized three-wave data of 408 Korean American and 378 Filipino American youths (M = 15.00 years, SD = 1.91 at […]

Suicide research with refugee communities: The case for a qualitative, sociocultural, and creative approach

People from refugee backgrounds experience distinctively complex situations pre- and post-resettlement and are at heightened risks of suicide. The bulk of research on refugee suicide and suicidal ideation is based on diagnostic perspectives, biomedical approaches, and quantitative measures. To explore lived experience of suicide among refugee communities in more depth, this review highlights the need […]

Suicide during the COVID-19 pandemic: Uncovering demographic and regional variation in the United States and associations with unemployment and depression

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened risk factors for suicide globally. Using prominent sociocultural theories of suicide, we investigated whether the COVID-19 pandemic affected suicide rates differently across demographic groups and regions in the United States of America. In Study 1, we found that after 2020 suicide rates increased especially among young Black and Alaskan Native populations. […]

Engaging with whanau to improve coronial investigations into rangatahi suicide

This article reports the findings of two studies of the Aotearoa coronial service that sought to understand how coronial processes engage with whānau who have lost a rangatahi to suicide. The aim of the combined study was to understand the extent to which coronial investigations met the needs of Māori bereaved by suicide. We conducted […]

Examining the relationship between academic expectations and suicidal ideation among college students in India using the interpersonal theory of suicide

Suicide scripts in Italian newspapers: Women’s suicide as a symptom of personal problems and men’s suicide as a symptom of social problems

Background: There is substantial variability, by culture, in suicide rates, and also in suicide beliefs and attitudes. Suicide beliefs and attitudes predict actual suicidality. They also are elements of cultural scripts of suicide. Most suicide-scripts research has been conducted in Anglophone countries. Aims: This study investigates women’s and men’s suicide scripts in Italy. Methods: Italy’s suicide scripts, including beliefs about […]

New collaborative research on suicide prevention, practice, and policy with American Indian and Alaska Native communities holds promise for all peoples

Youth suicide is increasing in the United States, with deaths among younger people of color driving this upward trend. For more than four decades, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) communities have suffered disproportionate rates of youth suicide and years of productive life lost compared to other U.S. Races. The National Institute of Mental Health […]

Childhood suicide: A call to action for play therapists

As rates of children attempting and dying by suicide accelerate in the United States, it is imperative that play therapists increase their competency to address childhood suicidality. This article provides evidence-based data on this phenomenon and is a call to action inviting play therapists to cultivate awareness, knowledge, skills, and advocacy competencies to address childhood […]

New collaborative research on suicide prevention, practice, and policy with American Indian and Alaska Native communities holds promise for all peoples

Youth suicide is increasing in the United States, with deaths among younger people of color driving this upward trend. For more than four decades, American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) communities have suffered disproportionate rates of youth suicide and years of productive life lost compared to other U.S. Races. The National Institute of Mental Health […]

Structuring roles and gender identities within families explaining suicidal behavior in South India

Background: This paper examines the social structures, culture, gendered roles, and their implications for suicidal behavior in South India. Exploring the cultural process within the structures of family and society to understand suicide and attempted suicide from the perspectives of survivors, mental health professionals, and traditional healers has not been achieved in the existing suicide-related research […]

The engaged community action for preventing suicide (ECAPS) model in Latin America: Development of the ¡PEDIR! program

Purpose It is estimated that someone dies by suicide every 40 s globally and that 3000 people end their lives daily. Of these deaths, 79% occur in low-resource settings. The very nature of the low-resource settings often serves as a barrier to the adoption and implementation of evidence-based suicide prevention models that have demonstrated success in […]

Cultural values and self-harm

We are all born into a broad culture strongly influenced by kinship, upbringing, development, and peer exposure. We carry the basic characteristics of that culture with us wherever we go. Cultures mould both our   personalities and our attitudes. Yet some core aspects of culture may change because of acculturation following exposure to broader, newer, and […]

What do we know about needs for help after suicide in different parts of the world? A phenomenological perspective

Background: “A person’s death is not only an ending: it is also a beginning – for the survivors. Indeed, in the case of suicide, the largest public health problem is neither the prevention of suicide (…), nor the management of attempts (…), but the alleviation of the effects of stress in the survivor-victims of suicidal deaths, […]

Development and evaluation of culturally adapted CBT to improve community mental health services for Canadians of South Asian origin: Final report 2023

People of South Asian descent living in Canada are impacted by various social determinants of health that can negatively influence their mental health and may decrease their access to care. South Asians in Canada with major  depression are also 85 per cent less likely to seek treatment than other Canadians who experience the same illness.5 […]

A social disorganizational theory of suicide

Over the last 20 years, suicide rates have grown across most demographic groups in the United States, making the sociological study of suicide as imperative now as it was in Durkheim’s day. For the most part, however, sociologists study suicide solely using Durkheim’s analytic strategy. The following article recovers a text on suicide long since forgotten […]