Youth suicide as a "wild" problem: implications for prevention practice

Abstract

The intent of this article is to explore the idea that youth suicide -which is conceptualized here as an unstable, historically contingent, and unruly problem - cannot be solved, nor contained, through an exclusive reliance on pre-determined, universal or standardized interventions. Informed by a constructionist perspective, social problems like youth suicide are understood as constituted through language and other relational practices. Based on a close reading of the mainstream school-based suicide prevention literature it is argued that youth suicide has largely been constructed as a tame problem, and this in turn places certain limits on what might be thought, said or done in response. By re-imagining youth suicide as a wild and unstable problem that is deeply embedded in local, historical, and relational contexts, more expansive possibilities for thinking, learning and responding might become available. Implications for school-based suicide prevention are discussed. Keywords: suicide, youth, prevention Copyrights belong to the Author(s). Suicidology Online (SOL) is a peer-reviewed open-access journal publishing under the Creative Commons License 3.0. Language: en