Report Publish Date: May 23, 2022

This journal article proposes a framework for understanding the impact of structural racism on systems meant to prevent suicide among young people. The authors also recommend ways to dismantle structural racism in suicide prevention. 

Primary Takeaways

The authors say structural racism affects suicide risk and suicide prevention among young people of color within intersecting systems: families, schools, neighborhoods, and crisis care.

Because structural racism is so baked into and across systems, changing those systems is a complex process that must happen in a variety of ways and at all levels of systems, the authors write, especially at points where care is the responsibility of multiple institutions.

The authors propose several ways to address structural racism in suicide prevention, including reallocating resources to low-income communities and communities of color to address segregation, income inequality, and other manifestations of historical racism. The researchers also say there is a need for research on suicide and suicide prevention that investigates the role of structural racism, training for psychiatric providers to help them navigate their field’s structures, and more cultural competency in youth suicide prevention and intervention. 

Overview and Objectives

Young people of color face a higher risk for suicide during their teen years and young adulthood than do White people, and they also have more trouble getting the mental health care they need. The authors wanted to create a framework that helps researchers, policymakers, and mental health practitioners understand the ways structural racism creates disparities in suicide risk and suicide prevention approaches. 

Hypothesis or Approach 

The authors’ framework, the Structural Racism and Suicide Prevention Systems Framework, shows how racist structures create mechanisms that cause mental health problems among children of color and their families, keeps them from getting adequate mental health care, and prevents suicide crisis systems from identifying them and helping them when they are in distress. They use an ecological-developmental approach and focus on the ways systems intersect—places where young people may fall through the cracks and interventions could help dismantle structural racism. 

How This Influences Change

The authors say reimagined systems that dismantle structural racism must be “preventive, rather than reactive; restorative, rather than punitive; and community-driven, rather than externally imposed.”