Critically Vulnerable

In the last few years I have written more than 300 articles on the suicide crisis and on suicide prevention. In those same years I have supported hundreds of suicide affected-families and thousands of critically at-risk individuals. In my view, understanding why one has suicidal thoughts should be our most pressing need.

We are losing at least 3,000 Australians to suicide each year. More than one quarter of the national suicide toll is comprised of migrants, particularly of relatively newly arrived migrants from language diverse backgrounds. Refugees who have endured immigration detention are at elevated risk to suicide. The suicide rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, one in 18 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths is a suicide. However, because of under-reporting issues and circumstances where there is an inability to gather adequate evidence to satisfy the coroner of a suicide, I estimate that rather one in 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths is a suicide.

The nation should weep, but more importantly should act, when 80% of suicides of children aged 12 years and less are of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children.

We do not need endless research to identify the elevated risk groups or the ways forward. We know them. We only need to disaggregate. If we don’t, we discriminate; we leave people behind.

The most elevated risk group to life-threatening aberrant behaviour and to suicide are individuals who as children were removed from their biological families, followed by former inmates, the homeless, foster children, the chronically impoverished, newly arrived migrants, culturally and linguistically diverse migrants, and LGBQTI people.

Impoverishment is one of the more significant risk factors that leads to suicidal ideation. Aberrant behaviours and depression are more pronounced among the impoverished. The more education someone has completed, the greater the suite of their protective factors to steering clear from suicidal ideation. The majority of the national prison population has not completed year 12 – in fact the majority have not completed year 9. High levels of education are a more significant protective factor than full-time employment. More education translates to a dawn of new meanings, to a better understanding of the self, to a more positive psychosocial self, to the pursuit of what happiness and its contexts can and should mean.

Identifying trauma in any given population must recognise underlying narratives, and from within these narratives consequently understand the triggers that can lead to serious depression, disordered thinking – to the tipping points.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicides are predominately borne of poverty and disparities. I have travelled through hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and with many of these communities the poverty is third-world-akin. Many of these communities have been degraded from missions and reserves to corrals of human misery and suffering; where hardly anyone completes year 12, where few have any serious employment, where all hope is extinguished.

That this should be their lot is an abomination – moral and political. The degradation of these communities is not the fault of the communities but the fault of our governments.

Very few Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living above the poverty line kill themselves. The improving of life circumstances for impoverished and disadvantaged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders is the only way forward to reducing one of the world’s highest suicide rates. More needs to be done for the impoverished, for those without hope.

The multifactorial issues that lead to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicides are the same that lead to the abominable arrest, jail and homeless rates of Aboriginal peoples. Today, one in 13 of Western Australia’s Aboriginal adult males are in prison. Prisons are filled with the low-level offending borne of the tsunami of poverty-related issues.

In my time in the tertiary sector, I assisted many former inmates and homeless individuals into education, gaining entry to an educational institution and hence in supporting them from the point of entry to the point exit. None of those souls I assisted landed back in jail or on the streets.

Of the world’s middle and high income nations with recent colonial oppressor histories, Australia has the widest divide in all measurable indicators between its first peoples and the rest of the population.

For all Australians, whether they are descendants of the first peoples, newly arrived migrants from culturally diverse backgrounds, or marginalised Australians, there is an accumulation of stress that we never before had in our nation. There is also an unprecedented capacity of hate today. It plays out in racism, in competition, in general unhappiness and degenerates into hate, anger, mobbing and bullying. The constancy of these traumas can become irrecoverable for some.

We cannot continue to live in silence and dangerously internalise this tragedy. The hundreds of suicide affected families I have sat with, who have lost their loved ones, are crying out to be heard, they are screaming.

Self-destructive behaviours that can culminate in suicidal behaviours are preventable.

I remember the suicide affected families and those lost who continue to echo in the hearts of those they have left behind. I remember children lost to suicide, as young as nine. We need education to lead with the knowledge that at all times we need to be civil, courteous, kind to one another. We have to be there for one another – people need people.

We should tell the stories of those lost. Let us be fearless in this, for in the telling of their stories the imperatives of the ways forward will be reinforced.

I remember a father who found his son hours after his suicide. The father lay his son down and cradled his body through the night till responders arrived in the morning. I remember the distraught family of a young man who only a week before his suicide had run into a burning house and rescued a young mother and her baby. I remember attending the funerals of three young people in the one community – three burials in five days, three graves in a row. The youngest was a 15-year-old girl. I wailed on the inside as I stared at three graves. I remember a father of six children who took his life, a mother of five children who took her life, a pregnant mother who took her life. I remember a 10-year-old child who took her life, an 11-year-old boy who took his life, a 12-year-old girl who took her life.

As a nation we lay claim to responding to the suicide crisis. We are one of only 28 nations with a “suicide prevention plan”. But it’s paper-thin. It’s about encouraging services to work together in suicide prevention and postvention. We are nowhere near it. As a nation we have not prioritised this harrowing crisis.

As a young child I remember the absorption of sadness by some of Sydney’s Greek community of the suicide by a newly-arrived young Greek male. Years later I would read some of his letters to the homeland, yearning to return after he made his quid in a country he believed found it hard to accept him. This is the tale of many newly-arrived migrants albeit to one of the world’s most culturally diverse nations. Racism has many veils and layers and misoxeny and xenophobia are toxic. Today, in my work with suicide affected families and my research, in my many journeys I find that there are more stresses today than yesterday, more unhappiness today than yesterday.

Identifying trauma and understanding the issues that despair individuals and collectively as families are imperative in tailor-making the education, the conversations and the support. We start with behavioural observations and proceed with the opportunity for the individual to tell their story.

What makes for unhappiness and happiness has to be understood – human beings are inherently courageous. People want to choose happiness but a muddle-minded society has been getting in the way. The factors that can culminate in suicide are the most preventable of the various destructive behaviours that impact on families and communities.

Understanding one another, understanding unfairness, helping one another, being there for one another are the most profound steps to suicide prevention. We have to spread the love and do this with a salt-of-the-earth approach. We must lead by example in making sense of the world, in supporting others to improve their life circumstances and to understand happiness.

• Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia, the Samaritans on 116 123 in the UK,and the National Suicide Prevention Hotline on 1-800-273-8255 in the US.

As I begin to write this piece, I have been informed of a former refugee who has taken his life, of a mother who has taken her life, of a young Aboriginal woman who has taken her life, of a former inmate who has taken his life, of a newly arrived migrant who has taken her life. Each of these individuals was aged in their 20s.

Suicide takes twice as many Australian lives as all other forms of violence combined, including homicides, military deaths and the road toll. The suicide toll should be the nation’s most pressing issue – the issue of our time. But alas it is not.

There is a humanitarian crisis in this affluent nation, a catastrophic, systematic crisis: suicide accounts for more than 5% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths. It’s a staggering, harrowing statistic. In fact in my estimations, because of under-reporting issues, suicide accounts for 10% of Indigenous deaths. The contributing factors are many and intertwined, underwritten by the kind of acute poverty, disadvantage and marginalisation that should make no sense in one of the world’s wealthiest nations.

But they are not limited to socioeconomic factors. From within the cesspool of this situational trauma – this narrative of victimhood – there has manifest a constancy of traumas – multiple, composite, aggressive, complex traumas.

We need more than just generalised counselling, but this last resort is the first resort. Resilience selling is part of this generalised counselling where we beg the victim to adjust their behaviours – but how far and for how long without hope on the horizon?

The factors that can culminate in suicide are the most preventable of the various destructive behaviours that impact on families and communities. There are many ways forward.

A national inquiry or royal commission into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicides – and in fact into all suicides – is long overdue. We cannot live in the silences and dangerously internalise this tragedy. I have travelled to hundreds of homeland communities and the people who are losing their loved ones are crying out to be heard, they are screaming.

Despite all the good work done by many in saving lives, the suicide toll, particularly for the most elevated risk groups, is on the increase. Without the deep examination that a royal commission will provide, the suicide prevention space will remain inauthentic – hostage to carpetbaggers and the ignorant.

It is never enough to deal with the symptoms. The cause must be validated without languishing within it so as to avoid drowning in negatives and misery.

Identifying trauma in any given population, including among LGBQTI people, former inmates, foster children, the homeless, the chronically impoverished, newly arrived migrants, culturally and linguistically diverse migrants and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, we start with behavioural observations and proceed with the opportunity for the individual to tell their story. People need people, 24/7.

Our capacity to listen is an imperative and must be achieved without judgment, for often redemption is needed: forgiveness in addition to sympathy and empathy. These skills do not come easy to everyone but they are vital in the suicide prevention space, in trauma counselling, in restorative therapies, in navigating people to a positive self.

There is no greater legacy that any government can have than to prioritise and invest in the improving of lives, the changing of lives, the saving of lives.

• Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.