Changing Selves in Changing Worlds: Youth Suicide on the Fault-Lines of Colliding Cultures

What does it mean to somehow override change and to count one's self as one and the same individual, continuous in time? What does “continuity” mean for whole cultural groups? How might disruptions to a sense of personal or cultural persistence deprive us of a past, and a connection to our as yet unrealized futures? Why is it that the bulk of us who succeed in knitting up our raveled sleeves of care choose for life, while those who loosed the thread of their continuous existence so frequently make the opposite choice? The program of research outlined here—work that explores the relation between markers of self- and cultural continuity, and suicidal behaviors in both culturally mainstream and Canadian Aboriginal youth—provides evidence that personal persistence and persistent peoples have low or absent rates of youth suicide, while individuals and communities lacking a requisite sense of continuity regularly suffer suicides in epidemic numbers.

Keywords:

• suicide
• personal continuity
• cultural continuity
• Aboriginal Canadian

Grants that have supported this research include: Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Human Early Learning Partnership, Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, & Social Sciences Research Council of Canada.