Suicide and Evidence Seminar Series

Suicide research and prevention is generally driven by statistics, which in the UK and much of the West have historically reported (white cis) men as dying at the highest rates of suicide. In this seminar series, we rethink what constitutes as ‘evidence’ about suicide. We learn from folks researching suicide with populations who are often under-represented in or excluded from suicide statistics. In these cases, we are interested in how evidence on suicide is navigated and reimagined, and what this offers for suicide knowledge production and for people's lives. We also hear in this seminar series from people who are critiquing the statistical status quo of existing (often pathological, white male) evidence on suicide. What becomes possible when we think beyond trying to fit people into existing ways of measuring suicide and unliveability? Find out more about the project here.

What is LGBTQ+ Suicide Prevention? From community to crisis and back again (and again and again)

Dr Hazel Marzetti

All UK suicide prevention policies construct a need for tailored, culturally competent approaches to suicide prevention in communities identified at ‘at risk of’ or ‘vulnerable to’ suicide, such as LGBTQ+ communities. However, what such approaches should, or even could, look like tends to be largely under-explored. In this seminar I will draw on theorists such as Lisa Stevens, to argue that it is perhaps in part due to a conceptual blurriness about what suicide prevention is when focussed on working with marginalised or oppressed communities, which may have wider applicability beyond the bounds of LGBTQ+ communities. To make this case, I will analytically draw on research digitally mapping 79 services, groups and organisations identified as providing suicide prevention support to LGBTQ+ communities, informal conversations with 37 practitioners across health and community services, and formal narrative interviews with 20 practitioners working across statutory and community provisions. Reflecting critically across this work, I will first explore the pathologising problematics and productive potentialities of expanding suicide prevention beyond the conventional disclosure-to-recovery, mental health model that dominates the landscape of suicide prevention both in the UK, and globally. I will then move onto consider how the paucity of services, both broadly for suicidal people, and more specialist services working with LGBTQ+ communities, can result in systemic circularity that is harmful for both service providers and service users. To conclude this presentation, I will consider how LGBTQ+ (and other minoritised) communities, may act as test cases that illuminates the complexities of attempting to access services for all suicidal people.