“Rebuilding our community”: Hearing silenced voices on Aboriginal youth suicide

• Published in: Transcultural Psychiatry
• Main Authors: Walls, Melissa L., Hautala, Dane, Hurley, Jenna
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Article; First Nations
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4096116; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24097414; https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461513506458

This paper brings forth the voices of adult Aboriginal First Nations community members who gathered in focus groups to discuss the problem of youth suicide on their reserves. Our approach emphasizes multilevel (e.g., individual, family, and broader ecological systems) factors viewed by participants as relevant to youth suicide. Wheaton’s conceptualization of stressors (1994; 1999) and Evans-Campbell’s (2008) multilevel classification of the impacts of historical trauma are used as theoretical and analytic guides. Thematic analysis of qualitative data transcripts revealed a highly complex intersection of stressors, traumas, and social problems seen by community members as underlying mechanisms influencing heightened levels of Aboriginal youth suicidality. Our multilevel coding approach revealed that suicidal behaviors were described by community members largely as a problem with deep historical and contemporary structural roots as opposed to being viewed as individualized pathology.