NSCSW Lunch & Learn: Depathologizing Suicide

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day and September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month in Canada.

Suicide is an issue impacting service users and community members throughout Nova Scotia and it disproportionately affects individuals from excluded and oppressed communities. At times, addressing suicidality in service users and community can seem like a task too big and too risky for social workers and helpers. However, it is important to understand that everyone can address suicide! At times the biomedical model and institutional silos can create barriers to supporting service users who are affected by suicidality.

This session explores the issues of suicidality beyond biomedical concepts and provides social workers and helpers with resources, language, and new understandings about suicidality based on emerging research and evidence. Questions explored in this session include:

• What are the underlying assumptions in suicide intervention and prevention?

• How might social workers and helpers move beyond clinical and crisis-based approaches to suicide prevention?

• How might social workers and helpers feel less fear and be empowered to address issues of suicide in their practice in clinical, government, and community settings?
• What are the resources, frameworks, and tools that exist to support community-based suicide prevention?

This session is in partnership with Nova Scotia Health’s community-based suicide prevention initiative, Roots of Hope.