The Structural Violence of Indigenous Suicide Prevention Policies in Canada

Abstract

Indigenous peoples in Canada suffer from very high suicide rates of which there are various state-created programmes and efforts to combat. However, the variety of these programmes may be limited in their conceptions of Indigenous suicide. I predicted that by analysing existing suicide prevention policies and frameworks, I would find that they system-atically place Indigenous peoples in vulnerable positions through the enforcement of Western ideals of health and suicide, thus providing inadequate support towards preventing suicide. This would constitute structural violence. I used a content analysis to analyse and code themes in suicide prevention policies in Canada. I found that suicide prevention policies perpetuate structural violence as these policies overwhelmingly conceive suicide as an outcome of poor mental health, based on colonial knowledge, which is economically self-serving to the state.