Indigenous Suicide: A Global Perspective with a New Zealand Focus

Abstract

This perspective article describes the problem of Canadian indigenous suicide from a non-Canadian viewpoint. In particular, the article compares both similarities and differences in suicide prevention between Māori in New Zealand and indigenous peoples in Canada. It emphasises that the problem of indigenous suicide is not being indigenous but coping with losses secondary to colonisation. A useful way to translate this into helpful clinical conversations and actions is to think about loss of belonging. Culture and belonging are key components of identity and as such should be considered in all psychiatric encounters, not just in those who are considered minorities or “other.” The article concludes by suggesting how some of the experiences of addressing health inequalities and suicide in Māori may be applied in Canada.

Clinical Implications

Psychiatrists should consider assessing identity in all clinical encounters. A core part of identity is a sense of belonging, which may be damaged in people who come from groups who have experienced the effects of colonisation. Identifying damaged belonging generates useful ideas about how it could be repaired.

Limitations

It is not yet clear how belonging influences the prognosis of different mental disorders. The article is written by a non-Māori psychiatrist.

The purpose of this article is to address the issue of indigenous suicide and in particular to highlight suicide prevention among Māori in New Zealand and to explore any lessons for Canadian mental health professionals. It is written by a “Pakeha,” a non-Māori New Zealander, originally from England who has been privileged to work clinically and academically with Māori, so it should be read in this context.

The title of this article is a paradox. Indigenous people are usually defined by their relationship to a particular piece of land, yet this article addresses from an international perspective those features that indigenous people may have in common that are relevant to suicide and suicide prevention. It starts by defining what is indigenous and aboriginal and offers a way of thinking that may generate useful solutions to the problem of suicide in these communities. It describes the author’s experience of doing research and clinical work in partnership with Māori in New Zealand. This article argues that a cultural assessment should be part of a psychiatric interview with any patient. It concludes by examining what lessons can be learnt in Canada from Māori suicide prevention programmes.

How Should We Define Indigenous?

First, what or whom is indigenous? Indigenous is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “born or produced naturally in a land or region; native or belonging naturally to (the region, etc.)” (http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/94474?redirectedFrom=indigenous#eid) A difficulty with referring to the problem of “indigenous suicide” is that it implies that the problem is being indigenous. However, there are many indigenous populations around the world who do not have high suicide rates—especially where indigenous people are in the majority. An example is the People’s Republic of China, where the Han Chinese are the indigenous population and form over 90% of present-day Chinese people, and the official suicide rate according to the World Health Organization is 7.9/100,000 compared to the Canadian rate of 10.8/100,000. However, there are many indigenous populations where the suicide rate is much higher than the mainstream population. Examples are in Australia, where the Aboriginal suicide rate is 21.4/100,000 compared to the population rate of 10.3/100,000. ¹ In New Zealand, the Māori suicide rate is 16.8/100,000 compared to the total population rate of 10.6/100,000. ² In Canada, the suicide rate in Nunavut is 63.5/100,000 (Statistics Canada CANSIM tables 102-0551 and 102-0552, http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/a26). The fact that indigenous suicide rates vary, with some being very high and others the same as the mainstream population, suggests that it is not being “indigenous” that is the problem. ³

The Problem of Postcolonisation

Indigenous groups who experience high rates of suicide all share the experience of being recently colonised. This gets to the heart of the issue, which is around managing loss at the population level. The process of colonisation involves loss of power, autonomy, and memory, which can be summarised as a loss of sense of belonging. Sense of belonging can be thought of in a present-day sense as a form of loneliness and is explicitly contained as “thwarted belongingness” in Joiner’s model of the origins of suicidal behavior. ⁴ In this model, thwarted belongingness refers to a combination of loneliness and an absence of relationships marked by reciprocal care. Both these factors occur in the present. However, belonging can also refer to belonging to a place or to the past in terms of a story (of family, of culture, for example), knowledge, or specific cultural practices. So, for example, in Māori, the term Turangawaewae refers to a place where you can stand where you feel empowered and connected. It is a foundation, your place in the world, your home, so that Māori will greet strangers by defining themselves in terms of their mountain, their river or lake, and their tribe. In clinical practice, this means that clinicians who see Māori are expected to say something about themselves as part of the initial “ritual of encounter”—this is a form of a “cultural handshake.” The importance of a narrative that goes back in time can be seen in the healing powers of narrative exposure therapy. In this therapy, making sense of life after trauma appears to be important in regaining dignity, acknowledging the trauma, and satisfying the need to “testify.” ⁵ A narrative that acknowledges the past is what appears to be lost during colonisation with forcible attempts to erode memory and language (for example, residential schools in Canada). This means that people are more vulnerable to other risk factors for suicide that they share in common with the mainstream population. We know from research on mainstream populations that entrapment and reduced problem solving lead to suicidal thoughts and behavior. ⁶ For indigenous populations who have been recently colonised, there is a communal loss of power and autonomy, which means that there are fewer ways for individuals to access resources to solve difficulties. The role of damaged “communal identity” was demonstrated by Coupe and Hatcher ⁷ in a case control study of Māori who presented to hospital emergency departments with intentional self-harm. Coupe and Hatcher found that only 11% had a secure cultural identity compared to 37% of age- and sex-matched controls. Similarly, Chandler and Lalonde ⁸ found lower suicide rates in Aboriginal communities in British Columbia where the native language was still spoken. Older studies of North American Indians in the United States found that the highest suicide rates were in those communities who suffered the highest rates of acculturation. ⁹

Damaged Belonging as a Clinically Useful Concept

Belonging is a core part of identity, and thinking about damage to belonging by colonisation helps to generate potential solutions to high rates of suicide. ¹⁰ Belonging can be repaired by valuing indigenous culture, practices, and stories. Stories that restore dignity and reduce self-stigma appear to be particularly important. Clinically, this extends to using indigenous ideas in the clinical encounter. In one study by this author with Māori who presented with intentional self-harm, we used the Māori ritual of encounter described by the powhiri to structure engagement with research participants. The powhiri is a welcoming ceremony with several distinct parts that include a challenge, a call of welcome, formal greetings, song, and the sharing of food. Most health professionals will go through some sort of powhiri when they start work in New Zealand, whether they are Māori or not. This is important as it acknowledges the important role of Māori in New Zealand. In a Canadian context, the parallel would be new health employees taking part in a smudge ceremony. In the context of a research study, this meant that the clinicians spent some time introducing themselves and where they were from, that other people apart from the patient were welcome in the room, that the meeting could begin and end with a “blessing,” and that food and drink could be shared at the end of the session. This demonstrates how nonindigenous clinicians may value indigenous process, which can provide a conceptual roadmap to bridge cultures.

Responses to the Problem of High Suicide Rates

Researching the problem of high suicide rates in indigenous populations is difficult, especially demonstrating the effects of interventions in suicide prevention. The first difficulty is the sample size as most indigenous populations who have high suicide rates are numerically small. To stand a good chance of detecting a change in suicide rate from say 100/100,000 to 50/100,000 would need nearly 50,000 people enrolled in each arm of the trial (power of 80%, α ≤ 0.05). Similarly, studies that aim to reduce the repetition rate of people who present to hospital with self-harm would need 300 people in each arm of the trial to demonstrate a reduction in the proportion from 30% to 20%. While this does not seem a large number, the difficulties of recruiting this number of indigenous people from small communities given the low rate of consent to take part in trials can be problematic. One response to this is to measure proxy measures of suicidal behavior such as hopelessness. However, this then creates difficulties with participants dropping out of the study before the end and not completing these self-assessments.

Even before enrolling potential participants in trials, there is the difficulty of identifying the ethnicity and who should do this. This can be particularly problematic in urban centres where intermarriage is common. Ethnicity is poorly recorded in most organisational databases and is often done by how someone appears. Interventional studies need to put effort into accurate identification of ethnicity by indigenous peoples.

Another difficulty with doing work in suicide prevention is the sense that some indigenous communities have been “researched to death.” This can cause problems in recruitment into trials and barriers to community engagement. It may also result in an unrepresentative sample of participants. In one study by this author on the Māori population, those who refused to take part in an interventional study following intentional self-harm were significantly more likely to have a history of self-harm than those who agreed to take part. ¹¹ In those who did take part, those who agreed to be in the control arm had significantly less “pathology” than those in the intervention arm.

There is also difficulty with capacity in both clinicians and researchers in this area. There are few indigenous doctors in Australian Aborigines and Canadian Inuit, for example, let alone any indigenous psychiatrists. The same applies to researchers in this area, with few researchers in suicide prevention coming from indigenous populations with high suicide rates. This speaks to some of the institutional biases against working in this area with few resources being directed to addressing this problem. There is, for example, no provision for indigenous representation on any committee in the Canadian Psychiatric Association. (This is in contrast with the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, in which nearly every committee in the College has Māori and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation.)

Having completed research in this area, there is the difficulty of publishing the work. Many journals do not publish work on indigenous populations as they do not see it as relevant to most people who read the journal. (This is one of the more subtle effects of colonisation but demonstrates the persistent theme of ignoring the colonised indigenous population.) Also because of the study size issue, intervention studies may have to use alternatives to the randomised control trial design, which methodologists who review papers see as less powerful and therefore less publishable.

The Role of Culture in Mainstream Populations

Everyone belongs to a culture! It is not something that is specific to indigenous populations. Given that this is the case, it seems odd that in psychiatric practice, there is no attention paid to culture in mainstream populations. The DSM-5 cultural formulation interview ¹² (http://www.psychiatry.org/practice/dsm/dsm5/online-assessment-measures#Disorder), for example, seems to contain questions that would be important to explore with anyone, not just people who are considered as “other.” Such questions include “What troubles you most about your problem?” or “Why do you think this is happening to you?” There are no questions about belonging. The cultural formulation interview also focuses on data extraction rather than other aspects of culture that may affect the clinical encounter. Given that culture is an important part of identity, there is a good argument to be made that a cultural assessment should be a routine part of any psychiatric assessment for everyone in the same way as social or family history. Sample questions would ask about identity such as, “Where do you belong?” “Where were you born?” or “What is your family story?” This helps to generate useful ideas about interventions in people who may feel displaced from their place in the world. Also, knowledge of clinicians’ own culture can inform the practitioner how they may be perceived by patients and their own cultural blind spots.

Are There Suicide Prevention Programmes in Māori That Could Be Used by Canadian Aboriginal Populations?

Although a Māori suicide prevention strategy, Waka Hourua (http://www.wakahourua.co.nz/), was launched in 2014, it is unlikely that similar suicide prevention programmes could be immediately useful to Canadian Aboriginal communities. This is because the context in the 2 countries is different. Māori form about 15% of the population in New Zealand, and the country is founded on the Treaty of Waitangi, which established principles of partnership, protection, and participation between Māori and the Crown. Whilst these principles have not always been honored, there is a formal process through the judicial Waitangi Tribunal to redress some of the broken promises made in the treaty. There is no similar process in Canada. In New Zealand, the Ministry of Health explicitly references the treaty, and there is a Māori Health Strategy (http://www.health.govt.nz/about-ministry/ministry-business-units/maori-health-business-unit/our-history-and-current-position). An example of what this means in practice is that all grant applications from bench science to clinical work have to include a section on relevance to Māori and evidence that the authors have consulted with Māori. There is also a separate Māori ethical review process. Clinically, when new staff apply for posts in the health service, they are nearly always asked how the Treaty of Waitangi is relevant to their new position, and interview panels customarily include Māori and consumer representatives. Māori words are used in conversation, and meetings often begin with Māori and to some extent follow Māori protocol.

Although there is a clear need to address systemic issues in Canada, there are some lessons to be learnt. First, funding should address research on the high suicide rates in Aboriginal communities and community development. These initiatives should be rooted in these communities with an emphasis on cultural identity as a protective factor against suicide. Second, there needs to be explicit capacity building to increase the number of Aboriginal researchers and clinicians. Third is to have the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) adopt the New Zealand Health Research Council policy of including a mandatory section in grant proposals on relevance to Aboriginal peoples in much the same way that gender is currently already included. Fourth, professional and government bodies such as the Canadian Psychiatric Association and the Mental Health Commission of Canada need to give far greater prominence to First Nation, Metis, and Inuit people. They can do this by ensuring that the terms of reference of committees in these organisations include Aboriginal people on every committee.

In summary, the problem of indigenous suicide should really be called the problem of postcolonial suicide; restoring a sense of belonging to address the problem of suicide makes theoretical sense and generates potentially useful interventions in the clinical encounter, and the role of culture in psychiatric assessment should not be restricted to those perceived as “others.” There are many lessons, or taonga (Māori word for “treasures”), to learn from indigenous peoples.