Personal Persistence, Identity Development, and Suicide: A Study of Native and Non-Native North American Adolescents

Why are young persons so over represented among those who choose to end their own lives? And why are these already elevated rates of suicide still higher among Aboriginal youth? The developmental and cross-cultural studies reported in this Monograph demonstrate that the beginnings of answers to these questions lie in disruptions to young people’s developing conceptions of personal or cultural persistence. Grounded in a series of normative studies indicating that Aboriginal Canadian and non-Aboriginal Canadian youth ordinarily follow distinctive pathways of identity development. The findings reported demonstrate that those who fail to own their personal past, and their as yet unrealized future, are at especially heightened risk of suicide. At the level of whole communities, the efforts of Aboriginal groups to reclaim their cultural past and to direct the future course of their civic lives are similarly associated with dramatically lower youth suicide rates.