Victims often unsuccessful in adapting to modern life, researcher finds

On New Year's Day a 22-year-old woman from Sanikiluaq hanged herself, beginning another year of suicide in Nunavut.

"Hopefully that'll be it for a while," said Tim Neily, the chief coroner. "But historically, we'll probably have a couple dozen [in 2008]."

Each year Nunavut residents hear the body count and hope the numbers dwindle. Is the suicide rate going down, or up?

It's hard to tell.

Twenty-four Nunavut residents took their lives in 2007. It was Nunavut's best year for suicide, discounting the half-year of 1999, when, from April until December, 24 residents killed themselves.

But just one year earlier, in 2006, 29 residents killed themselves. That was one of Nunavut's worst years for suicide, second only to 2003, when Nunavut witnessed 37 suicides.

In the end, even a good year in Nunavut is bad, given that, when the years are averaged out, the suicide rate remains 11 times the national average.

Besides, trying to discern a trend from year to year may be futile. Nunavut's small population means the numbers are bound to swing up and down each year. From the dispassionate view of a statistician, the sample size is too small to say much.

This is one reason why Jack Hicks, an Iqaluit-based researcher, has examined historic suicide rates by Inuit across the Arctic.

In a recent edition of the journal Indigenous Affairs, Hicks sheds light on the roots of the Inuit suicide epidemic.

High suicide rates among Inuit only began after families moved off the land and into communities, beginning in the 1950s.

The seasoned hunters who settled near trading posts and RCMP stations appeared to adjust fine. Their children, who were often taken away from their parents to attend residential schools, were less lucky.

The now too-familiar pattern of alcohol abuse, child neglect and violence began. So did the emergence of high suicide rates.

Hicks describes the period as "a time when the communities were raw and rough, when substance abuse was just beginning to ravage families, and when discrimination was an everyday fact of life."

This pattern repeats itself across the Arctic, following the settlement of Inuit. Suicide rates spiked in North Alaska in the late 1960s, Greenland in the 1970s and early 1980s, and in Canada's Eastern Arctic in the 1980s and 90s.

Outside the Arctic, most people who commit suicide suffer from mental illness. Not so in Nunavut and elsewhere in the circumpolar world, where the explanations for suicides are often shockingly mundane: a relationship break-up, a fight with parents, trouble at school, or some other upsetting, but common, conflict.

Behind these triggers, the young Inuit – who are most often men – who commit suicide commonly suffer from low self-esteem, impulsive behaviour and poor coping skills.

The good news? Hicks finds that some places that were settled first, such as parts of Alaska and Greenland, are witnessing a decline in suicide rates – not everywhere, but in the bigger cities.

"It may be that young men who have grown up in these new conditions – stronger health care systems, higher rates of school success, higher employment rates, more role models, generally better living conditions – both get a better start in life and have a greater chance of becoming happy, successful adults," Hicks writes.

Inuit at greatest risk of suicide are those trapped between old and new ways of living, Hicks finds.

They often lack the hunting skills of their ancestors, and the problem-solving skills and resiliency that came from living on the land.

Yet the goals of modern life are also often out of reach. Few jobs are available, especially to the many who drop out of school. Role models are often equally scarce. Destructive behavior, however, such as binge drinking and abusive relationships, is abound, and easy to emulate.

In Nunavut, the lives of young Inuit range from "almost limitless opportunity" for some, and for others, "the daily reality… of historical traumas being transmitted through their family and community, overcrowded housing, a weak school system with a 75 per cent drop-out rate, limited employment opportunities, sociocultural oppression, and drifting through their teenage years stoned on marijuana."

Until these conditions change, there may be little reason to hope for Nunavut's skittering suicide numbers to permanently settle at lower levels.

But Hicks says coordinated efforts by government to tackle suicide can make a difference.

Since 2004 Nunavut's Isaksimagit Inuusirmi Katujjiqatigiit, or Embrace Life Council, has coordinated different community groups, from sewing circles to theatre troupes, to offer support to residents who may be at risk of committing suicide.

But Hicks says these activities, while important, are no replacement for a well-organized suicide-prevention plan developed by government, to ensure Nunavut's social safety net catches residents who may be considering taking their lives.

Such plans exist in Alaska and Greenland. In 2007, Nunavut released its own plan, which Hicks describes as "a bland, safe, and utterly uninspired" effort that was "quickly whipped up."

He says Nunavut's government isn't doing enough to help kids at risk.

"It is high time public health emergencies were declared in and by the Inuit regions themselves," Hicks writes, "and that all levels of governments in those jurisdictions should aspire to becoming world leaders in culturally-appropriate suicide prevention."