Young People’s Understandings of Suicidal Possibilities:

Taking a discourse analytic approach

Katrina RoenInstitute for Health Research, Lancaster University

In collaboration with: Jonathan Scourfield, Cardiff University

Elizabeth McDermott, University of York

ESRC-Funded Research: RES-000-22-1239

Ours is not the first study to consider how people make sense of youth suicide, understanding that it is:

‘this process of meaning-making that situates people's parameters for action ...’

(Wexler, 2006, p.2940).

DATA ANALYSIS TABLE Willig’s six stages

1How are the

discursive objects constructed?

2Locating instances

where the same discursive object is

constructed in different ways.

3How do the discourses work in relation to one

another?

4What is gained from

constructing the discursive object in this particular way? What subject positions are

offered by the constructions we have identified?

5How do the identified discursive

constructions and subject positions open up or close down opportunities for action and limit

what can be said or done?

6“This stage in the analysis traces the consequences of taking up

various subject positions for the participants’ subjective experience.” (p.175)

What can be felt, thought, and experienced from within the subject positions identified?

Frameworks for understanding youth suicide:

(i) cast suicidal subjects as Other,

(ii) highlight suicide as something that is accessible to young people,

(iii) demonstrate the desire to rationalise suicidal behaviour, and

(iv) define suicidal subjects in terms of their relationships with others.

It’s just like if you wanted to find out how to kill yourself you can just type it in Google

(P13: Female focus group participant)

Most of my friends have tried to commit suicide, so I’m used to it.(P 7: LGBT focus group participant)

I kind of think it’s kind of a bit normal when people try and kill themselves these days

…My boyfriend describes it as like a kind of a kind of a trend cause

he’s, we know, both know so many people who’ve tried to kill themselves like a lot

(P13: Female focus group participant)

Melanie: … Like everyone knows someone who has attempted it or who has died from it or you know, there’s always, it is there and I would definitely say that sort of you know, it’s sort of like the right of every teenager to be dramatic.

…

Melanie: most of the time it is just you know, something that crosses your mind, I wouldn’t say it’s something that a lot of people consider or actually consider or actually do, but it is [pause]

Researcher: There.

Melanie: Yeah.

Melanie: Um I mean I think, I think really the biggest problem is the fact that young people aren’t taught to look at the good side of the things. … Yeah, I mean, it’s sort of like, I think it’s more to do with the whole dramatic thing where we want something to be wrong, if that makes sense.

Researcher: No it does make sense, absolutely.

Melanie: We sort of need meaning in our lives.

Example from Stage 1 for Melanie’s interview

How are the discursive objects constructed?

Suicidal possibilities

Melanie describes suicide as

something that is ever present in the awareness of young people. It is present

as an idea, a possibility, but not

usually as something one would actually

attempt.

Meaningful lives

Melanie suggests that there is a sense of drama

to which young people gravitate – that young people have a right to this sense of drama.

Melanie seems to understand this desire for

emotional drama and crisis as stemming from the need for meaning in

one’s life.

Example of Stage 3 for Melanie’s interview

How do the discourses work in relation to one another?

Young people have a right to be dramatic and to do things that

make their lives more meaningful, even if that means over-

dramatising life’s difficulties. Suicidal possibilities are

omnipresent but most people do not really consider acting on them. The quest to make their lives more meaningful, and the tendency to dramatise problems, may make

suicidal behaviour more accessible to some young people.

DATA ANALYSIS TABLE Willig’s six stages

1How are the

discursive objects constructed?

2Locating instances

where the same discursive object is

constructed in different ways.

3How do the discourses work in relation to one

another?

4What is gained from

constructing the discursive object in this particular way? What subject positions are

offered by the constructions we have identified?

5How do the identified discursive

constructions and subject positions open up or close down opportunities for action and limit

what can be said or done?

6“This stage in the analysis traces the consequences of taking up

various subject positions for the participants’ subjective experience.” (p.175)

What can be felt, thought, and experienced from within the subject positions identified?

Example of Stage 4 for Melanie’s interview

What is gained from constructing the

discursive object in this particular way?

Young people are figured as gravitating towards

things that give meaning to their lives, even if that means taking a dramatic

approach to their problems, wanting things to go wrong, rather than

tolerating the relative meaningless of things

just being mundane and enduring. According to

this understanding, things being dramatic,

awful, life-threateningly unbearable at least gives

them meaning.

What subject positions are offered by the

constructions we have identified?

Framing suicide as something that all young

people think of gives permission for suicidal

possibilities to be entertained without this

being a sign of pathology or immorality. What is opened up here is a

suicidal youth subject position – this is not about picturing all young people as actually being suicidal but it is about picturing

young people as potentially able to

contemplate suicide as a possibility.

Suicidal behaviour as a rite of passage(Russell, Bohan, & Lilly, 2000)

‘suicide as a regrettable reaction towards some common problems of life’

(Thorslund, 1992, p.152)

The way that ‘youth’ carries negative connotations may contribute to a sense of not being valued, and feeling hopeless

(Bourke, 2003)

Suicidal possibilities as an integral part of a young person’s struggle to find meaning in life?