Suicide and Social Justice

Mark E. Button, PhD, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (USA).Ian Marsh, PhD, is Reader in the School of Allied Health Professions at Canterbury Christ Church University (UK).

"Finally—a book that examines the growing suicide crisis from a social justice perspective that powerfully disrupts traditional assumptions and frameworks. This timely book provides an exceptional body of critical knowledge by highlighting the importance of understanding the effects of social, political, and economic forces on human pain and suffering that can make life unliveable. The unique multidisciplinary scholarship throughout the volume is brilliant, rigorous, thoughtful, and encourages the reader to reflect on the social systemic factors involved in the modern suicide epidemic. The essays within this collection are life-saving. Suicide and Social Justice is essential reading for anyone, and everyone, concerned with the public health crisis of the century." — Heidi Rimke, PhD, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Winnipeg"This volume is an important, compelling and original contribution to the emerging field of critical suicide studies. By providing a diverse range of perspectives on the connection between suicide and social justice, the authors set out new and vital ways to approach and understand suicide. The book challenges many conventional views and approaches to the issue of suicide by cogently and carefully showing how suicide must be framed through the lens of inequality and social justice. Only by such an approach, in my view, will it be possible to critically and meaningfully engage with suicide prevention in a realistic, experiential and holistic manner. Nothing could be more urgent." — Baden Offord, Director and Dr Haruhisa Handa Chair of Human Rights, Centre for Human Rights Education, Curtin University"Mark E. Button and Ian Marsh have woven together an impressive assemblage of practitioners, persons directly impacted by suicide, and academics, connected in solidarity with a collective ethics for justice doing. These tenacious authors/activists challenge the very descriptions used to express suffering and offer emergent, just practices, rich critiques, alternative critical analysis of how the harms of suicide are caused and framed, and ways to better respond with dignity, justice, liberation, and hope." — Vikki Reynolds, PhD, Activist, Therapeutic Supervisor, and Adjunct Professor

• AcknowledgementsList of ContributorsIntroduction Mark E. Button and Ian Marsh Part I1. Suicide and Social Justice: Discourse, Politics and Experience Ian Marsh 2. Shame as Affective Injustice: Qualitative, Sociological Explorations of Self-Harm, Suicide and Socioeconomic Inequalities Amy Chandler Part II3. Cultural Continuity and Indigenous Youth Suicide Michael J. Chandler and Christopher E. Lalonde 4. Strengthening Borders and Toughening Up on Welfare: Deaths by Suicide in the UK’s Hostile Environment China Mills 5. Suicidal Regimes: Public Policy and the Formation of Vulnerability to Suicide Mark E. Button 6. Protest Suicide among Muslim Women: A Human Rights Perspective Silvia Sara Canetto and Mohsen Rezaeian 7. From Psychocentric Explanations to Social Troubles: Challenging Dominant Discourse on Suicide in Ghana Joseph Osafo Part III8. I Am a Suicide Waiting to Happen: Reframing Self-Completed Murder and DeathBee Schererself murder: Poem by Daniel G. Scott9. It Takes a Village: The Nonprofessional Mental Health Worker MovementRebecca S. Morse, Michael J. Kral, Maura McFadden, Janet McCord and Lory Barsdate Easton10. Availability and Quality of Mental Healthcare Services for Veterans at Risk for SuicideCraig J. Bryan, AnnaBelle O. Bryan, David C. Rozek, Feea R. Leifker and Alexis M. May11. Hello Cruel World! Embracing a Collective Ethics for Suicide PreventionJennifer WhiteIndex