Disability Justice

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People with Disabilities and Suicide Prevention -- A Human Rights Conversation: Interview with Sheryl Boswell and Lisa Morgan | Episode 106

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People with Disabilities and Suicide Prevention -- A Human Rights Conversation: Interview with Sheryl Boswell and Lisa Morgan | Episode 106

People who live with disabilities (e.g., physical, intellectual, mental health and neuro-divergent) often face a range of social and economic adversaries including discrimination and prejudice that impacts their ability to work, get educated, and live in safe homes and communities. These disadvantages consequently impact the mental health and well-being of this diverse community. In this episode I interview two international leaders in the conversation on suicide prevention among people living with disabilities. Sheryl Boswell, from Toronto, is the Director of Youth Mental Health Canada and Lisa Morgan is the Co-Chair of the Autism and Suicide committee of the American Association of Suicidology.

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Critical Suicidology -- Why Our Traditional Approaches in Suicide Prevention Have Failed: Interview with Jess Stohlmann-Rainey | Episode 72

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Critical Suicidology -- Why Our Traditional Approaches in Suicide Prevention Have Failed: Interview with Jess Stohlmann-Rainey | Episode 72

Critical suicidology is an emerging area of scholarship and advocacy that brings together expertise from diverse perspectives to re-examine all that we have believed to be “true” about suicide prevention. Critical suicidologists question the highly medicalized framework of understanding a suicidal person and see suicide in context by understanding how other frameworks — like social justice — expand our imagination on what is possible in prevention, intervention and postvention.

In this conversation with Jess Stohlmann-Rainey, we talk about the ways traditional efforts in suicide prevention have failed us including:

  • Forced treatment

  • Fear-based approaches of restraint and isolation

  • Trying to predict suicide risk

And instead explore alternative, creative and upstream approaches to suicide prevention such as transformative justice work, mutual aid peer support, and accountability in making reparations for histories of harm done to communities.