Reimagining Suicide Prevention as a Social Justice Issue: Getting Back to Social Work's Roots.

Abstract

In 2020, nearly 50,000 people in the United States died by suicide and many more (1.2 million) attempted suicide (Hightower, 2022). Suicide is a leading cause of death overall, and among people ages 10 to 34 it is the second leading cause of death (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], n.d.). Furthermore, several populations are disproportionately impacted, including American Indians/Alaska Natives, those who identify as LGBTQ+, military veterans, criminal justice system–involved people, and Black youth (Hochhauser et al., 2020). These patterns underscore disturbing new trends that necessitate multifaceted and social justice–centered responses. Mainstream suicidology has historically framed suicide as an individual act shaped largely by psychopathology (Marsh, 2020). Additionally, prevailing psychological theories of suicide emphasize individual ideation-to-action factors such as hopelessness, psychache (intolerable psychological pain), perceived burdensomeness, and thwarted belonging. However, these theories overlook the sociocontextual conditions that contribute to individual-level factors preceding suicidality. As a result of this decontextualization, suicide interventions primarily focus on individual symptomology (Marsh, 2020). For example, treatment approaches often include suicide-specific psychotherapies that target individual cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes (Bryan, 2021), and are often coordinated or delivered by mental health professionals, such as licensed clinical social workers.