10th of September is World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD) and many of our netECR members have come together to provide a collection of new blog covering a range of topics related to suicide and self-harm. The articles present a wide collection of views, experiences, and perspectives on suicide and self-harm including themes around research, lived experiences, suicide prevention policies, cultural issues, scientific practices, and public engagement. We hope that these blog articles will help those involved in the field of suicide prevention to expand their views on the topic, influencing and advancing practices of prevention and intervention, and ultimately helping to save lives.
Huge thanks to all wonderful netECR members who have contributed, in alphabetical order:
Allie Bond, Austin J. Gallyer, Bethany Cliffe, Eleanor Bailey, Emma Nielsen, Erik Reinbergs, Faraz Mughal, Grace Cully, Hazel Marzetti, Hilary Causer, Holly Crudgington, Joeri Vandewalle, John F. Gunn III, Katerina Kavalidou, Kate LaForge, Katherine Brown, Katherine Bird, Kealagh Robinson, Kenvil Souza, Kerry Hozhabrafkan, Laura del Carpio, Madhav Bhargav, Martina McGrath, Meryem Betul Yasdiman, Mirabel Pelton, Rosie Pendrous, Tyler R. Pritchard, Valerie J. Douglas, & Wouter van Ballegooijen.
Blog Articles:
Does one size fit all? Adapting Safety Planning Intervention with and for autistic adults
By Emma Nielsen. There is always a to-do list on my desk. It is usually scrawled across a scrap piece of paper, often elaborately highlighted and probably makes little sense to anyone else. But it is always there and it makes sense to me. It means that in times when I am overwhelmed or bouncing…
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Anxiety and Buddhism: How meditation bridges the gap
By Madhav Bhargav. It was 16:30 pm on a Friday evening and I was standing beneath the neon light patiently waiting on my turn to be called in for an interview for a PhD position. I began to feel a tingling sensation flow through my body. It was excitement, contentment, fear of failing and the…
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The self-harm/suicide field: Collective action, personal hope
By Katherine Brown. World Suicide Prevention Day (WSPD) 2021 is upon us. Although this day is already one which unites people across the globe in reflection, this year’s theme – ‘Creating hope through action’ – has especially got me thinking. WSPD was established eighteen years ago. I’ve been in the field of self-harm/suicide for a…
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Suicide Ideation: A pivotal precursor to understanding suicide in young adults
By Madhav Bhargav. Natural selection will never produce in a being any structure more injurious than beneficial to that being, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. No organ will be formed for the purpose of causing pain or for doing an injury to its possessor.Charles Darwin Recently, more humans…
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Where protocol meets pragmatism: Learnings from a large suicide prevention research project in Australian schools
By Eleanor Bailey. My team has spent the better part of the past two years trying to get our large school-based suicide prevention project off the ground here in Melbourne. The project is titled “Multimodal Approach to Preventing Suicide in Schools” (or MAPSS for short), and is currently in its second of five years. For…
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The ethics of suicide research and why sharing data is important
By Wouter van Ballegooijen. From the perspective of an idealistic researcher, research in the field of suicide prevention has obvious merit. Understanding this subject and what works to prevent it will eventually lead to better help and care for individuals who are at-risk. Potentially, we can save lives. There are important ethical questions to consider…
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(An update on) 3 things we need to know to reduce suicide rates in autistic people
By Mirabel Pelton. As a society, we urgently need to prioritise the wellbeing of autistic people [A] to reduce suicide rates. In this blog, I update the three areas that I first wrote about for #WSPD 2019. To address this hidden crisis, I argue, we need to continue to report prevalence rates, but we also…
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The Census makes no sense: Count us in
By Martina McGrath. Rebels, misfits, outsiders, troublemakers and agitators have a lot to answer for. People with a lived experience of ‘difference’ throughout history have always been the movers and shakers of significant and often times transformative social change. In Australia, one recent example of this came when Australia voted for marriage equality in 2017.…
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Let us shift the focus of suicide prevention away from the individual and to the society
By John Gunn. In 1971 the anti-litter organization Keep America Beautiful released the “Crying Indian” ad. In it, Iron Eyes Cody, an actor dressed in Native American clothing, paddles a canoe along a waterway that is polluted. As he arrives on shore, a bag is thrown from a passing car and it explodes, scattering more…
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When the world is already turned upside down: Grief and bereavement during a pandemic
By Laura del Carpio. When COVID-19 hit and the world was suddenly turned upside down, I was in the middle of transcribing a series of interviews as part of my research. This work looks at the experiences of adolescents who have faced a bereavement (i.e. the death of someone significant) by suicide or other causes,…
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Taking uncertainty about life and death seriously
By Kate LaForge. In her brilliant book exploring suicidality among Inuit youth, Lisa Stevenson [1] writes: It became evident to me that presuming the value of life, staging it as the ultimate good, could be as dangerous as negating it. If listening to the pain in the lives of suicidal youth is only a means…
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On Recent Criticisms of the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide
By Tyler R. Pritchard. Suicide is a complex phenomenon that is influenced by multiple interacting factors. Indeed, it can be overwhelming as an early career suicidologist trying to understand suicide and support those struggling. I, and many others, have the opportunity to have suicide be a part of our research, clinical work, and personal history.…
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The welcoming changes in self-harm research and next steps
By Katerina Kavalidou. The linguistic and attitudinal changes within self-harm research have been very welcoming in the last years, with studies highlighting that through the last two decades suicide-specific journals, such as Crisis, Archives of Suicide Research, and Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior have managed to reduce the use of stigmatising language for those with lived…
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Tips for partnering with secondary schools to conduct self-injury and suicide research
By Kealagh Robinson. Adolescence is a critical developmental period for self-harm research and intervention. Self-injury, suicidal thoughts, and suicidal behaviours often begin during adolescence [1, 2], and adolescent self-harm predicts poorer psychological outcomes in adulthood [3, 4]. Many adolescents regularly attend secondary schools, making these pragmatic recruitment sites for adolescent research participants. Secondary schools themselves…
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Firearm Lethal Means Counseling in Schools
By Erik Reinbergs. Firearms are ubiquitous in the United States. However, few people here are aware that most gun deaths in the US are suicides. Young people are not exempt. Firearms account for roughly 46% of suicides in the United States for young people ages 0-24 – nearly 3,000 deaths per year – making guns…
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Firearms and suicide: What we know, what we can do, and steps forward
By Allison E. Bond. What do we know about firearms and suicide? In the United States (US), firearms are the most commonly used and most lethal method for suicide1.Additionally, suicides account for two-thirds of all gun deaths in the US1. The presence of firearms in the home is associated with a 3-5x increase in the…
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Can We Use EEG to Find Brain Differences in Those Experiencing Suicidality?
By Austin J. Gallyer. Last year for World Suicide Prevention Day, I wrote about how we have little evidence — for or against—differences in the functioning of the brains of those who experience suicidality. The reason for this was that existing studies that used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and/or electroencephalography (EEG) were severely underpowered…
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Eating disorders and suicide: What does the research say?
By Rosie Pendrous. A review of 94 papers published between 2000 and 2018 estimated that approximately 8.4% of women and 2.2% of men experienced an eating disorder (ED) – including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and other specified feeding, and binge eating disorder – in their lifetime[1]. Global statistics also suggested that the…
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“I get by with a little help from my friends”: Adolescent peer friendship networks and self-harm
By Holly Crudgington. What do you think of when you hear the word ‘school’? The word might have many connotations, depending on who you ask. Context matters. Personally, it brings back some fond and some difficult memories of being a teenager at a public secondary school in the UK. It’s been over 10 years since…
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“There are two sides to my childhood”: Positive childhood experiences in the face of adversity
By Kenvil Souza. There are so many memories I have from my childhood. When I think back, I remember the pet chicken that I called “beauty” when I was in primary school. My mother let me keep her in spite of us living in a tiny flat. She would stay on the balcony, and I’d…
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Young people’s experiences of general practice for self-harm
By Faraz Mughal. We all know how serious self-harm is, and self-harm in young people is no different. Recent findings using electronic general practice patient records showed an increase in self-harm recorded in general practice in young people, particularly in girls aged 13-16.[1] In terms of healthcare utilisation: in the National Health Service young people…
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Stories from the side-lines: family members’ expectations of care and treatment for their relatives with suicidal ideations
By Joeri Vandewalle. There is growing recognition that family involvement is important in the care and treatment of people with suicidal ideations. Family members can provide valuable information about their relatives [1], engage in safety planning [2], and offer support to reduce their relatives’ loneliness [3]. Moreover, family members can support continuity of care by…
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Are fluffy and fido keys to suicide prevention? The role of pets
By Valerie J. Douglas. It is not a secret that I love animals. I’ve been teased by colleagues and friends for having a small petting zoo in my apartment- a bird, a dog, and a cat somehow living (relatively) harmoniously. These critters bring great joy to my life, even when they won’t stop screeching when…
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The need for timely, comprehensive and compassionate care: Experiences of aftercare following high-risk self-harm
By Grace Cully. “Because the support I had from the members of the crisis team … I had promised them that if I did feel … that I’m getting down, or I would do something … then I promised I would call somebody. Which I did the same day.” [1] Over the course of my…
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Please put your own mask on first, before helping others: Taking care of suicide researcher’s mental health and wellbeing
By Hazel Marzetti. As suicide researchers we inevitably think about suicide (virtually) every day. We spend our time reading, writing and thinking about the saddest and darkest times in other people’s, and sometimes our own, lives. We want to understand these experiences, we want to improve these difficult times, and we want to enhance the…
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Finding benefits after adversity: Post-traumatic growth and its association with suicidal thoughts
By Meryem Betul Yasdiman. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.Victor Frankl People face challenging, sometimes life-changing, experiences throughout their life. These experiences can include losing a loved one, problems at work, a severe illness, natural disasters, or other situations that bring negative emotions. Such stressful…
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Including women and healthcare professionals in conversations about perinatal suicide
By Kerry Hozhabrafkan. I have a vivid memory of being at university during my midwifery training, listening to the lecturer describe a case study which had been chosen to support our learning. It was the tragic story of a woman who had recently become a mother for the first time and became rapidly unwell. The…
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Examining the pathway to self-harm in high-risk youth using a novel Card Sort Task for Self-Harm (CaTS): It’s time to change how self-harm is assessed
By Katherine Bird. Self-harm (any self-injury or -poisoning regardless of intent) is a significant public-health concern, affecting between 18.8% and 50% of young people under 25-years [1; 2]. The concern relates to the physical harm, emotional distress, and reduced mental health and wellbeing self-harm causes. Most concerningly, self-harm is the most significant predictor of death…
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Postvention: Perceptions of closeness, constructions, and contexts
By Hilary Causer. In this post I will share with you how my research into the impact of student suicide on staff in United Kingdom (UK) Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) has led me to consider an expansion to the concept of ‘perceptions of closeness’ [1]. Further, I explore how contextual factors may nurture such perceptions,…
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Why smartphone apps can be useful for students who self-harm
By Bethany Cliffe. It is well-documented that mental health difficulties are highly prevalent among university students, with self-harm in particular being twice as common in this group than in the general population [1]. The transition to university often involves moving to a new environment and leaving support networks behind, with uncertainties around how and where…
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