Report: Everyone in Nunavut should fight suicide

At the May 2003 meeting in Iqaluit of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, participants were invited to post the names of those who died by suicide on this bulletin board. Within a few hours, the board was covered with slips of paper. (FILE PHOTO)

To reduce the territory’s shocking rates of suicide, Nunavut needs an “urgent, aggressive response” that brings together all levels of government, all organizations and all residents, a special working group recommends in a new suicide prevention strategy released last week.

“Every person and organization in Nunavut can have a role in preventing suicide and in building a healthy community,” the working group said.

The group, made up of representatives from the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Embrace Life Council and the RCMP, began work on the strategy in 2008, following the release of a discussion paper in the spring of that year.

Though they originally aimed at finishing their work by the fall of 2008, the strategy wasn’t available for public release until this past week, when Tagak Curley, the health and social services minister, tabled it in the Nunavut legislature.

To underscore the urgency of doing effective suicide prevention in Nunavut, the working group sprinkled its strategy document with some grim findings, such as:

• RCMP information reporting that in 2009 alone, police in Nunavut responded to 983 occurrences in which persons were threatening or attempting suicide;

• data from the Qikiqtani General Hospital showing that among people aged 20 to 29, about half of all hospitalizations are related to suicide attempts;

• a study of one community in 2008 that found about four of every 10 respondents had thought of attempting suicide within the previous seven days and that three in 10 had attempted suicide within the previous six months;

In most years since 1999, Nunavut has suffered between 25 and 30 completed suicides. In 2003, the worst year on record, Nunavut suffered 37 deaths by suicide. In 2010, 27 people have so far died by suicide.

Death rates by suicide in Nunavut, especially among Inuit boys and men, are many times higher than the Canadian average.

But Inuit women are just as likely as Inuit men to attempt suicide, though they account for fewer completed suicides, the working group said.

And the report writers point out that Nunavummiut have been exposed to repeated suicide so often, they’ve come to accept the territory’s high rates as normal — though few talk about it in public.

“Despite this, it has been extremely difficult to talk openly about this issue in Nunavut, whether on the personal, family, community, or political level,” the document said.

They also say that people often use suicide threats as a weapon with which to manipulate others.

“Suicide has become so commonplace that people are using suicide threats to manipulate family, friends or partners into giving them what they want. There must be a call for a more responsible and productive way to talk about suicide,” the strategy says.

The primary roots of Nunavut’s suicide crisis are too be found in the traumas that Inuit began to suffer in the 1950s after the federal government forced them to move into settled communities, the working group found.

These include lengthy stays in southern tuberculosis hospitals and the Inuit experience with residential schools.

A good understanding of this historic trauma, which is being passed from generation to generation, “is an imperative first step in breaking its cycle in Nunavut.”

And to fix it, Inuit should receive quality mental health services comparable to those enjoyed by all Canadians, including a full range of mental health services and supports.

They also say Nunavut needs far more quality research aimed at exposing risk factors for suicide, as well as protective factors.

And they say that suicide prevention programs themselves should be evaluated through solid research to find out if they’re working, saying there’s “an unacceptable lack of evidence-based research on the effectiveness of suicide prevention initiatives.”

To make the strategy work, the team urges all players to make the following eight commitments:

• the GN’s Department of Health and Services would commit itself to mobilizing other departments, such as Education, Justice and CLEY to create an “overarching approach to suicide prevention;”

• all partners, but especially the GN, would commit to plugging Nunavut’s mental health service gaps by a “continuum of care” with more mental health workers and more community-based Inuit healing;

• all partners would commit to providing youth with a “stronger protective foundation,” including public campaigns against physical and sexual assault, anger management courses for youth, parenting classes and giving young people greater access to sports or land camps;

• the GN would commit to providing suicide intervention training across the territory;

• the partners commit to do, support and share research on suicide and the effectiveness of suicide prevention programs;

• the partners would commit to providing Nunavut residents with more general information about mental health and suicide prevention and to communicate their work in carrying out their suicide prevention action plan;

• the partners commit to better early childhood development, including the GN making early childhood development programs available universally to all Nunavummiut;

• the partners would commit to ensuring that communities gain access to money for community development activities.

(Official Version) Nunavut Suicide Prevention Strategy English