From the Community's Point of View: Suicide Prevention from the Ground up
Title: From the Community’s Point of View: Suicide Prevention from the Ground Up
Background/Purpose: The highest suicide rate in North America is among Indigenous peoples. Among the Inuit of Arctic Canada the suicide rate is ten times the national rate, and almost all suicides are youth. In the 1990s the federal government of Canada spent a large amount of money on training Inuit in suicide prevention. This was ineffective, and the suicide rates continued to rise. In my research with Inuit communities I discovered that several communities had developed their own activities and programs for suicide prevention, and the suicides decreased markedly. I went to two communities to find out exactly what they did, who was involved, and what the process was on such community action. Our research, along with research by Chandler and Lalonde (1998), convinced Health Canada of the federal government to develop a new policy for Indigenous suicide prevention, which consists of funding these communities to develop their own programs. They have funded over 200 communities thus far. This study will describe what these two communities did and how suicides were decreased.
Methods: The methodology of this study was ethnographic. I spent one month in one community and lived in the other community for nine months. This included interviewing 27 people and sitting in weekly meetings with the Amittuq Youth Society who was planning the suicide prevention strategy of opening a youth center.
Results: Interviews with key players in the first community found that they had organized weekly meetings of all community members, and weekly meetings of all youth in the community, plus the removal of the primary method of suicide from every house, the closet rod. Suicides stopped for about four years in this community that had the highest suicide rate in the Arctic. I worked with the Amittuq Youth Society in the second community and helped them apply for grants for the youth center. Most of these grants were received and the youth center opened. In the nine years after the center opened, compared to the nine years before, suicides have decreased by 70%.
Conclusions and Implications: In keeping with Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty, community control over health services including suicide prevention is essential. Communities can be helped by social workers and others to develop their own intervention strategies. We have found that for suicide prevention there is no one intervention that is effective, but rather community control, collective efficacy, is the effective ingredient. This can be turned into government policy to help communities take control over their interventions.