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Do Current Suicide Prevention Policies Neglect Suicide Survivors?

Said Shahtahmasebi

The emphasis placed on mental illness by policy makers and researchers to explain suicide in order to prevent it is both unwise and leads to adverse outcomes. For example, the flaws of conventional suicide prevention policies include incorrect and misleading suicide statistics such as the repudiated and discredited claims that 80%-90% of suicides had depression, the majority of suicide cases had mental illness, and that talking about suicide will lead to more suicide. Such false claims lead to erroneous decisions such restricting reporting and public discussion of suicide, and the sharp increase in anti-depressant prescription, e.g. in New Zealand anti-depressants prescriptions quadrupled between 2001 and 2012 with no impacts on suicide trends over the same period. There has been very little or no public conversation around suicide and its prevention, making suicide taboo. Therefore, there is a lack of confidence and experience in the population to deal with suicidal behaviour. As a result, there is an absence of public engagement with suicide survivors (family and friends of the suicide case). This paper reports on the experiences of a group of suicide survivors (parents and siblings) following the suicide of a loved one which has led to isolation, the internalization of grief and hindered the healing process.