Critical Suicide Studies: Decolonial and Participatory Creative Approaches

Dear Colleagues,

The sociocultural aspects of suicide occupy a relatively small space in the literature on this topic, whereas biomedical and mental health framings dominate the discipline of suicidology. Despite the growing recognition that “Eurocentric configurations” (Tisha X and marcela polanco, 2021) and western-centric notions of suicidality reflect colonial ideologies, the realms of knowledge grounded in Indigenous and majority-world expertise are not always validated to the same degree in suicide research, and by extension, in practical contexts. Critical suicide studies, a discipline that expands and enhances conventional biomedical approaches by engaging with lived experiences, power relations, social justice, and the histories that frame knowledge on suicidality have shifted the debate, but they require more nuanced perspectives if they are to continue to disrupt normative approaches. To reimagine how scholars, advocates, and practitioners think about and address suicidality, new scholarly spaces are needed to explore this topic from a critical, sociocultural angle.

Participatory creative methods and practices represent culturally safe and trauma-informed approaches to ethical research on suicidality, with much potential to disrupt the colonial underpinnings of the current knowledge. The impact of using participatory creative approaches such as filmmaking, immersive reality, or poetry, rather than positivist, standardized tools in research on self-harm, trauma, and suicidality, has been documented extensively (e.g., Lynn Froggett and Jill Bennett, 2023).

This Special Issue focusses on critical suicide studies, and more specifically, a sociocultural lens through which to examine and understand suicide using participatory creative methods. It aims to answer the following questions at the core of decolonizing suicidology:

• How does historical or intergenerational trauma from colonization, enslavement, confinement, abuse, displacement, detention, incarceration, torture, and genocide shape experiences of suicide?
• What are the contextual specificities and ethical considerations of participatory creative approaches in critical suicide studies?
• What is being silenced in critical suicide studies from a decolonial perspective?
• What can we do differently to achieve what Kristen Cardon (2021) calls “suicide justice”, which demands more accountability between settler suicide workers and the people and communities they work with?

This Special Issue aims to advance the debates on this topic in order to produce more precise scholarly work on critical suicide studies based on First Nations knowledge and a majority-world praxis. The focus on participatory creative models will expand the methodological literature and point to their potential as ethical methods within suicidology. Scholars with lived experiences of suicide (i.e., personal experiences of suicidal thoughts or attempts, caring for suicidal persons, or being bereaved or affected by suicide in any way) are encouraged to submit.

Please submit your proposals and any questions to Dr. Caroline Lenette <[email protected]> by 16 February 2024. Notification of acceptance will be provided by 1 March 2024. Final papers are due on 1 September 2024 for peer review.

Proposals should be one page in length and include a title, an abstract explaining its relevance to the Special Issue topic, a description of the population, and the methods used (if applicable). Also include author names and affiliations.

Dr. Caroline Lenette
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Social Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• critical suicide studies
• decolonizing suicidology
• sociocultural perspectives
• First Nations knowledge
• majority-world expertise
• creative methods
• participatory research
• lived experience of suicide
• suicide justice