Rethinking Suicidality in the Context of Suicide-Affirmative Healthcare

In this paper, I examine “suicidism” (see, e.g. Baril 2022, 2020), which is a framework that accounts for the ways suicidal persons are uniquely marginalized. Using my personal experiences as a suicide survivor, as well as research in suicidology and testimony from other survivors, I argue that coping with suicidality is rendered nearly impossible in a world where the dominant narratives of suicidality are written by persons with no lived experience being suicidal. Suicidal persons are epistemically and affectively harmed by suicidism and ironically, those services that are intended to help often serve to increase suicidality by sending mixed messages or by outright silencing suicidal persons. I argue that we should adopt many of the tenets of Baril’s “suicide-affirmative healthcare” model instead and allow space for suicidal persons to speak, and most importantly, to exist.

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