Authors ’ Correspondence:

• Main Authors: Michael J. Chandler, Christopher E. Lalonde
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.520.3211; http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~chandlerlab/Chandler %26 Lalonde (1998).pdf

We wish to thank Lisa Maberly and Holly Pommier for their diligence in locating many of the sources of data used in this study. Cultural Continuity 3 This research report examines self-continuity and its role as a protective factor against suicide. First, we review the notions of personal and cultural continuity and their relevance to understanding suicide among First Nations youth. The central theoretical idea developed here is that, because it is constitutive of what it means to have or be a self to somehow count oneself as continuous in time, anyone whose identity is undermined by radical personal and cultural change is put at special risk to suicide for the reason that they lose those future commitments that are necessary to guarantee appropriate care and concern for their own well-being. It is for just such reasons that adolescents and young adults—who are living through moments of especially dra-matic change—constitute such a high risk group. This generalized period of increased risk during adolescence can be made even more acute within communities that lack a concomitant sense of cultural continuity that might otherwise support the efforts of young persons to develop more