Young People’s Understandings of Suicidal Possibilities:
Taking a discourse analytic approach
Katrina Roen
Institute 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
2
1
3
Locating instances where the
same discursive object is
constructed in different ways.
How are the discursive
objects constructed?
4
How do the discourses work
in relation to one another?
5
What is gained from constructing the
discursive object in this particular way?
How do the identified discursive
constructions and subject positions open
up or close down opportunities for action
and limit what can be said or done?
What subject positions are offered by the
constructions we have identified?
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
Meaningful lives
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.
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 overdramatising 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
2
1
3
Locating instances where the
same discursive object is
constructed in different ways.
How are the discursive
objects constructed?
4
How do the discourses work
in relation to one another?
5
What is gained from constructing the
discursive object in this particular way?
How do the identified discursive
constructions and subject positions open
up or close down opportunities for action
and limit what can be said or done?
What subject positions are offered by the
constructions we have identified?
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?
What subject positions are
offered by the constructions we
have identified?
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, lifethreateningly unbearable at
least gives them meaning.
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?