Suicide in Health Care: Language Matters

In this course, Dr. Ann Luce, Associate Professor in Journalism and Communication at Bournemouth University, begins her talk with alarming statistics about the frequency of suicide on a global level. Many myths about suicide are debunked as Dr. Luce shows why suicide is such a complex issue. A huge problem for the larger picture of understanding and preventing suicide is the language that is used to describe and report it; this often creates greater stigma around it. Luce shares the strengths-based approaches which help reduce the labelling, stereotyping, and separating characteristics of inappropriate language, and shows how the issue should be discussed. The final topic – suicide among healthcare professionals – explains the multiple external factors which conspire to create suicide rates that are up to four times higher than for the general population. Luce outlines how we can spot suicide risk, and what our organisations need to do in order to be as effective as possible at preventing suicide and at implementing postvention communication and support.