Critical suicidology : transforming suicide research and prevention for the 21st century

« Traditional ways of understanding and preventing suicide are not working for everyone. In Critical Suicidology, a team of international scholars, practitioners, and people directly affected by suicide argue that the field of suicidology has become too focused on the biomedical paradigm: a model that pathologizes distress and obscures the social, political, and historical contexts that contribute to human suffering. The authors take a critical look at existing research, introduce the perspectives of those who have direct personal knowledge of suicide and suicidal behaviour, and propose alternative approaches that are creative and culturally sensitive. In the right hands, this book could save lives. »-- Résumé de l'éditeur Cover 1 Contents 6 Introduction: Rethinking Suicide 10 PART 1 Critiquing Suicidology: Constructions of Suicide and Practices of Prevention 22 1 Critiquing Contemporary Suicidology 24 2 A Critical Look at Current Suicide Research 40 3 Exploring Possibilities for Indigenous Suicide Prevention: Responding to Cultural Understandings and Practices 65 4 Risky Bodies: Making Suicide Knowable among Youth 80 5 Speaking of Suicide as a Gendered Problematic: Suicide Attempts and Recovery within Women’s Narratives of Depression 103 PART 2 Insider Perspectives 122 6 “Being More Than Just Your Final Act”: Elevating the Multiple Storylines of Suicide with Narrative Practices 124 7 When Despair and Hope Meet the Stigma of “Manipulation” and “Ambivalence” 142 8 No Regrets 163 PART 3 Creating Alternatives: Re-envisioning Suicide and Prevention 176 9 Hate Kills: A Social Justice Response to “Suicide” 178 10 Queer Youth Suicide: Discourses of Difference, Framing Suicidality, and the Regimentation of Identity 197 11 Understanding the Unfathomable in Suicide: Poetry, Absence, and the Corporeal Body 218 12 Indigenous Best Practices: Community-Based Suicide Prevention in Nunavut, Canada 238 13 Reimagining Youth Suicide Prevention 253 Contributors 273 Index 278 Globally, suicides account for a significant number of premature deaths every year. Traditional approaches to research and prevention are not working for everyone, but why is this? And what can be done about it? In Critical Suicidology, a team of international scholars, practitioners, and people directly affected by suicide argue that mainstream research models obscure the social, political, and historical contexts that contribute to human suffering. Combining personal experience with theoretical insights, this rich volume challenges the current orthodoxy governing suicide prevention in the West. Going beyond critique, it proposes alternative approaches that are creative, socially just, and culturally responsive. This book is a must-read for practitioners, policy makers, and researchers working in mental health services and related disciplines and for anyone who wants to make suicide prevention not simply a goal but an achievement. -- Back cover Critical Suicidology introduces alternative approaches to suicide prevention, approaches that don't pathologize inequality and distress but rather take into consideration the social, political, and cultural contexts of people's lives