Widening the Lens on Suicide Prevention – Introducing Practice and Policy Insights Articles

Over time, increasing prominence has been given to the social determinants of suicide and how these might be addressed (Fitzpatrick, 2018). There has been a shift from viewing suicide as a predominantly clinical problem associated with mental illness, to viewing it as a public health issue that arises from the confluence of a complex range of individual and societal factors. At an individual level, mental illness and other clinical risk factors are still seen as important, but so too are factors like people’s access to education and employment, the way they have been socialized, their cultural heritage, the stressors that may be playing a role in their lives, and their exposure to suicide. These individual-level factors interact with a vast array of social determinants relating to how society values and supports individuals. There is now increasing recognition that combatting suicide involves a multipronged approach that includes good mental health care but is not limited to this. It also requires commitment from sectors outside mental health that can make a quantum difference to people’s lives, like employment, housing, justice, and welfare (Pirkis et al., 2023).

Running in parallel with this increased focus on the social determinants of suicide has been a greater emphasis on the perspectives of people with lived and living experience of suicide. People who live with suicidal thoughts or have made a suicide attempt reinforce the idea that suicide is complex, and that no one person’s experiences are the same as another’s. Many do say, however, that although their wish to put an end to their emotional pain can be underpinned by mental health problems, there is often a whole range of other factors at play such as stigma and discrimination, cultural or religious pressures, isolation, relationship issues, financial problems, and lack of support from social services (Luhaaar & Sisask, 2018; Shamsaei et al., 2020; Williams et al., 2018). The corollary of this is that although they see clinical services as a core response in any suicide prevention strategy, they are increasingly calling for peer-led, nonclinical services to complement these clinical approaches (Schlichthorst et al., 2020).

At Crisis, we try to keep pace with advances in the field of suicidology. For this reason, we are changing the name and scope of one of our article types to reflect the more expansive perspective on how suicide arises and how it might be prevented. Our Clinical Insights articles will now be known as Practice and Policy Insights articles. The Clinical Insights articles have tended to focus on how particular clinical approaches, programs, or initiatives might be helpful for people who are actively suicidal. The new Practice and Policy Insights articles may also do this (because we view “clinical insights” as one type of “practice insights”) but they may also go beyond this. For example, they may consider how national suicide prevention strategies are adapting to address the social determinants of suicide, or they may describe the outcomes of “safe spaces” where people who are going through a suicidal crisis can receive nonclinical support from others with lived or living experience of suicide. The possibilities are endless!

Clinical Insights articles have been appearing in Crisis in their current form for many years. They have made a major contribution to knowledge about suicide and the role of clinical approaches in its prevention. Moving forward, the Practice and Policy Insights articles will do this and more. If you are interested in submitting an article in this new format, please see our Instructions for Authors. We are very much looking forward to a new generation of articles that widen the lens on suicide prevention.