Recovery as Liberation

By Jess Stohlmann-Rainey

As a suicide attempt survivor working in the suicide prevention field, my work is deeply rooted in social justice. During my tenure in suicide prevention, I have found it unsettling how little emphasis is placed on centering the voices of people with lived experience with suicidal intensity. The paternalistic approach to the field may be creating significant gaps in our ability to adequately support people with suicidal intensity and prevent suicide. People who have wanted to die understand in more depth than anyone else why and how the decision to live happens. The sublimation of those voices in favor of the voices of academic expertise has interfered with the field’s ability to create culturally relevant and effective strategies to prevent suicide. 

The underlying assumption of a social justice approach to suicide prevention is that liberation and efficacy come from a process that places equal value on the most current data available (science), strategies that have been proven effective (solutions), and the lived experience of those who have been oppressed or marginalized (stories).

The central goal of social justice work is liberation. In the context of suicide attempt survivorship, I have positioned recovery as liberation from a cycle of oppression that systematically mistreats people who live with suicidal intensity. Using Yariela’s Cycles of Oppression model, people living with mental health conditions and suicidal intensity are in the target group. Through these interlocking cycles of oppression, the experiences of suicide attempt survivors and their reactions to those experiences are used as justification for further marginalization.

Yariela’s model provides a good framework for understanding why suicide ought to be approached as a social justice issue. Within this framework, people who experience suicidal intensity become trapped in a cycle of oppression that self-validates, causing isolation, trauma, and internalization of stigma. This cycle works in direct opposition to recovery, and is reinforced by medical model of mental “illness.” This framework also shows how the dominant group participates in and benefits from the systematic mistreatment of people with suicidal intensity. The vast majority of the institutions that have been created for the purpose of supporting people with suicidal intensity actually alienate and isolate them, participating in their oppression and keeping them “sick.” Some of the best evidence for this is the astronomical suicide death rates of people leaving hospitalization. We have a system that tells people, “You are a danger to yourself,” then systematically increases their risk of death. This system is supported by legislation, law enforcement, mental health providers, schools, and many other institutions.

If this cycle is the means by which people are oppressed, recovery and liberation become synonymous. It is unusual for discussions about recovery to include activist language, but if these two are synonymous, perhaps people experiencing suicide ideation would benefit from understanding recovery in this way. The model below illustrates how recovery moves individuals experiencing suicide ideation out of a cycle of socialization that reinforces and perpetuates their suicidal thoughts.

The cycle of socialization starts at birth, is reinforced by families and institutions, and a primary contributing factor in our behavior. In the United States, we have been socialized to believe that people who experience suicide ideation are attention seeking, dangerous, and unpredictable. The cultural script we receive is that these people are weak, sick, and flawed. Rather than seeing suicidal intensity as symptomatic of deeply intense psychological pain, we treat suicide risk as a permanent and immutable characteristic. The message that is sent is that people having this experience are afflicted by suicidality, and it (and the individual) needs to be managed by any means necessary – forced treatment, incarceration, and even just allowing people to die.

To step outside of this socialization and into recovery is a radical act of liberation, and like all acts of liberation, can be dangerous and difficult. To push back against these cycles and say, “I deserve help and hope,” requires that we recognize how we have gotten to this place of helplessness and hopelessness. Entering into recovery disrupts and challenges the systems that have kept us shackled to our pain.  I can remember the moment I felt free, and it was powerful. Positioning recovery as liberation puts the people experiencing suicidal thoughts in the center of the discussion, asking them what it might mean to be free from their pain, and supporting them in their journey toward hope.