Using discourse analysis to develop understanding of suicide risk assessment

Abstract

In the United Kingdom (UK), we live in a society in which we are now much more concerned than we once were about the risk of something undesirable - For example, injury, illness, and physical and sexual abuse - happening to someone (e.g. Fowlis et al., Chapter 9, this volume). An idea has also grown that all such risk should, and perhaps can, be prevented. This has had an impact on a wide range of aspects of national life from children’s play to formal health and safety policies (Gill, 2007; Neuberger, 2009; Woodruff, 2005). It was reflected in the emphasis on public safety within government policy such as Modernising Mental Health Services: safe, sound and supportive (Department of Health, 1998). Death is seen as the ultimate undesirable outcome and arguably suicide as its most undesirable cause. So much so that it has had its own policy strand - National Suicide Prevention Strategies that focus on reducing the prevalence of suicide and which stress it to be a concern that straddles organisational respon-sibilities and boundaries (e.g. Department of Health, 2002, 2012, 2014; Scottish Government, 2013).