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… Continue reading Does one size fit all? Adapting Safety Planning Intervention with and for autistic adults
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… Continue reading Anxiety and Buddhism: How meditation bridges the gap
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… Continue reading The self-harm/suicide field: Collective action, personal hope
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… Continue reading Suicide Ideation: A pivotal precursor to understanding suicide in young adults
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… Continue reading Where protocol meets pragmatism: Learnings from a large suicide prevention research project in Australian schools
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… Continue reading The ethics of suicide research and why sharing data is important
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… Continue reading (An update on) 3 things we need to know to reduce suicide rates in autistic people
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.… Continue reading The Census makes no sense: Count us in
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… Continue reading Let us shift the focus of suicide prevention away from the individual and to the society
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,… Continue reading When the world is already turned upside down: Grief and bereavement during a pandemic
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… Continue reading Taking uncertainty about life and death seriously
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.… Continue reading On Recent Criticisms of the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide
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… Continue reading The welcoming changes in self-harm research and next steps
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… Continue reading Tips for partnering with secondary schools to conduct self-injury and suicide research
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… Continue reading Firearm Lethal Means Counseling in Schools
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… Continue reading Firearms and suicide: What we know, what we can do, and steps forward
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… Continue reading Can We Use EEG to Find Brain Differences in Those Experiencing Suicidality?
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… Continue reading Eating disorders and suicide: What does the research say?
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… Continue reading “I get by with a little help from my friends”: Adolescent peer friendship networks and self-harm
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… Continue reading “There are two sides to my childhood”: Positive childhood experiences in the face of adversity
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