Citation

White J, Morris J. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019; 16(18): e16183236.

Affiliation

School of Child and Youth Care, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 1700, STN CSC Victoria, BC V8W 2Y2, Canada. jjmorris@uvic.ca.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph16183236

PMID

31487801

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.

Language: en

Keywords

critical suicide studies; ethics; narrative therapy; politics