Widening the lens on suicide prevention: Introducing Practice and Policy Insights articles

Over time, increasing prominence has been given to the social determinants of suicide and how these might be addressed (Fitzpatrick, 2018). There has been a shift from viewing suicide as a predominantly clinical problem associated with mental illness, to viewing it as a public health issue that arises from the confluence of a complex range of individual and societal factors. At an individual level, mental illness and other clinical risk factors are still seen as important, but so too are factors like people’s access to education and employment, the way they have been socialized, their cultural heritage, the stressors that may be playing a role in their lives, and their exposure to suicide. These individual level factors interact with a vast array of social determinants relating to how society values and supports individuals. There is now increasing recognition that combatting suicide involves a multipronged approach that includes good mental health care but is not limited to this. It also requires commitment from sectors outside mental health that can make a quantum difference to people’s lives, like employment, housing, justice, and welfare (Pirkis et al., 2023).