Major study of Nunavut suicides seeks in-depth information from people left behind

JOHN THOMPSON

The most comprehensive study of suicide in Nunavut has begun.

The study, which will span several years and include every community in the territory, aims to answer one big question: Why?

There’s no shortage of theories and ideas about why young Inuit men choose to take their lives. But there’s little hard data to back these ideas up, according to Jack Hicks, an Iqaluit consultant who will carry out extensive interviews for the study.

Interviews will be conducted with parents, friends and others who knew the deceased. For every suicide investigated, the study will also seek someone who attempted suicide from the same age group, sex and community. And it will also seek to find someone who never attempted suicide who fits those same categories.

Researchers hope these interviews will help them piece together a complete psychological profile of people who die by suicide. They also hope to better understand the differences between those who complete a suicide, and those who do not.

Suicide cases included in the study begin from January 1, 2003, and will continue for the next few years while the study is underway. The study aims to capture the full stories of 100 suicide victims.

Interviews have already begun in Iqaluit, and community visits will begin in the New Year.

Leading the study is Gustavo Turecki, a psychiatrist who runs the McGill Group for Suicide Studies. He visited Iqaluit last week to meet with the study’s reference group, which includes Lori Idlout of the Embrace Life Council, Akitsiraq law graduate Sandra Inutiq, and Anglican minister Methuselah Kunuk, all from Iqaluit.

The chair of the national Inuit Youth Council, Jason Tologanak, will also participate with the reference group by telephone from Cambridge Bay.

The reference group will help ensure that Inuit culture is incorporated into the study and the right kinds of questions are asked, Turecki said.

“If you ask the wrong questions, your answers are no good,” he said.

Participation in the study’s interviews is voluntary, but Lori Idlout says she’s encouraging community members to be open-minded and to help with the study.

And from Terecki’s experience, most families find talking about their loss therapeutic. “It really helps to bring them closure,” he said.

“You tend to feel very guilty about it. You tend to be haunted by the idea that you should have done something that you didn’t do.”

This kind of study is known as a follow-back study, or a psychological autopsy. It considers the victim’s overall trajectory in life, from cradle to grave, as well as many specific factors leading up to their death, like the state of their relationships and employment, as well as psychological states like impulsive behavior, aggressiveness and dependency on drugs.

Only several follow-back studies of this size and thoroughness have been conducted.

One large follow-back study conducted in Finland during the 1980s concluded that most people who died by suicide in that country first tried to seek help from health workers, but slipped through cracks in the system. The study led to changes in how front-line health workers diagnosed patients, and about five years later, suicide numbers dropped by about 20 per cent.

A similar one-year study was also conducted in New Brunswick by Turecki, who recommended policy changes in that province.

There were 27 suicides in Nunavut last year, and a record 37 the year before. In comparison, there have only been 22 suicides this year, which makes the territory’s chief coroner, Tim Neily, hopeful that 2005 could be the best year yet.

“It’s really the wrong word to use. Twenty-two is still a huge number,” he said.

Two related projects will be done in connection with the Nunavut follow-back study: a “resiliency study” in five communities across Canada, to determine what characteristics cause aboriginals who attempted suicide to survive, as well as a “knowledge transfer,” which aims to ensure results are shared with the communities being studied.

All projects are funded with $1.5 million from the Canadian Institute for Health Research.

The follow-back study has 11 partners, including the Embrace Life Council, RCMP, Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Inc.