Canadian Research and Knowledge Translation Agenda on Suicide

Effective Short-term Psychotherapies addressing self destructive drives rooted in childhood adverse experiences need to made made available

The Canadian made and exported brief therapy model called Intensive Short-term Dynamic Psychotherapy has shown it self to be the most effective and efficient treatments for individuals with treatment refractory depression http://www.cochrane.org/CD010558/DEPRESSN_are-psychological-therapies-effective-treating-depression-did-not-get-better-previous-treatment as well as personality disorders https://cdn.dal.ca/content/dam/dalhousie/pdf/faculty/medicine/departments/department-sites/psychiatry/centre-emotions-health/short_term_dynamic_psychotherapy.pdf and the combination of these 2 https://cdn.dal.ca/content/dam/dalhousie/pdf/faculty/medicine/departments/department-sites/psychiatry/centre-emotions-health/depn-pd_2011.pdf . This and related approaches are more effective than other bona fide treatment in follow up https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26390013 . Despite these and 50 other studies of its effectiveness, the method is not available to most Canadians while it is widely used in other countries especially in Scandinavia. The Canadian governments should work to have this approach available to the public country wide.

Do individuals have the right to take their own life?

Modern society tends toward prolonging life and fosters a fear of death. People who have experienced a suicidic state are expected to suffer through their despair such that the 'bereaved are spared the grief, sadness, and loss. Much of current suicide prevention dialogue centers around a "you can't die because I would be sad" mentality, rather than focussing on the despair the subject is experiencing.

Can the internet be effectively used to reduce the risk of suicide?

Social media are here to stay for good or bad. Posts on social media, especially anonymous question-answer forums, have encouraged some people contemplating suicide to take their own lives. Others have come to the aid of people contemplating suicide by reaching out to them or providing links to resources. Can social media infrastructure be altered so that they become a force of benefit not harm, e.g., by reinforcing users who wish to help those contemplating suicide and discouraging those who don't?

How can those with lived experience be meaningfully engaged within suicide prevention and/or stigma reduction efforts?

Those with lived experience, such as suicide attempt survivors, suicide loss survivors, those with chronic suicide ideations, and/or those who care for them, are not always engaged in a meaningful way within suicide prevention efforts. They may be represented on councils or boards, but can be tokenised in this context and their knowledge may not be valued as highly as the clinical, academic knowledge shared at these tables. Additionally, when looking at stigma reduction efforts, celebrities who have experienced mental health experience are often sensationalized and used as an example of hope when often they are highly unrelatable. Many people with lived experience of suicidality may be lower income or without a permanent home or stable job, and may find that their intersectionality within multiple stigmatized populations has potential to give them less hope, not more, when they see examples of the rich and famous who have had the resources to support them in their healing journey. Those with lived experience have strong, passionate, knowledgeable voices. We should investigate how these voice would like to be meaningfully engaged within suicide prevention, stigma reduction, and suicidology research - and follow-up on the research findings by providing opportunities for this engagement to occur. This will engage a valuable perspective within suicide prevention work that will overall strengthen the validity and sincerity of suicide prevention within Canada.

What’s the relationship at a population level between macro-economic and social trends and suicide & what’s this mean for policy/programs?

One page, easy to read summary of research findings and impact on practice and/or behaviour

Traditional means of communication are great if you know how to access them and have the time to do so. Front-line practitioners and members of the public are usually lacking at least one of these requirements. Make it simple, in language that someone outside of health care can understand.

Educational material and fact sheets

Workshops, webinars, presentations

Peer-reviewed publications of research studies and systematic reviews

These are NOT the most accessible nor quickest means of obtaining information. However, if one has a high stake in a topic (e.g., because one is personally or professionally invovled with the topic) and one doesn't want to rely on someone else's summary of the research, one really has to plow into the primary literature.

Hit me with some TED talks with a small smattering of peer-reviewed articles, easily digestible information with a lot of meat