Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to explore the conviviality between practices of narrative therapy and the emerging field of critical suicide studies. Bringing together ideas from narrative therapy and critical suicide studies allows us to analyze current suicide prevention practices from a new vantage point and offers us the chance to consider how narrative therapy might be applied in new and different contexts, thus extending narrative therapy’s potential and possibilities. We expose some of the thin, singular, biomedical descriptions of the problem of suicide that are currently in circulation and attend to the potential effects on distressed persons, communities, and therapists/practitioners who are all operating under the influence of these dominant understandings. We identify some cracks in the dominant storyline to enable alternative descriptions and subjugated knowledges to emerge in order to bring our suicide prevention practices more into alignment with a de-colonizing, social justice orientation.
Highlights
Suicide rates are either increasing or continuing unabated in many parts of the world
The purpose of this paper is to explore the conviviality between practices of narrative therapy and the emerging field of critical suicide studies
Drawing on ideas from narrative therapy to engage with this nascent field of suicide studies allows us to analyze current suicide prevention practices from a new vantage point and offers us the chance to consider how narrative therapy might be applied in new and different contexts, extending narrative therapy’s potential and possibilities
Summary
Suicide rates are either increasing or continuing unabated in many parts of the world. We are reminding ourselves that our nation came into being through the theft of Indigenous peoples’ land, disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty, practices of genocide, and the violent removal of children from their families and communities [1] These territorial acknowledgements call on us to reckon with our privileges to see the specific ways that we have benefitted from the well-documented racist and structural arrangements that persist to this day. One of us (Jennifer) has worked as a suicide prevention counsellor, educator, policy consultant, and researcher and brings over 30 years of experience to this work One of her earliest memories of working in a professional capacity under the influence of dominant ideas about suicide prevention was when she was working in a large residential treatment centre for children and youth who had a range of emotional and behavioural challenges as well as complex trauma histories. Jonathan started to question if contemporary suicide prevention education and its emphasis on individual intervention might be missing the broader social, cultural, and political context in which suicide sits, and additional opportunities for creating conditions that promote life and living
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