Innovation Anthology #348:
For several years, Dr. Michel Tousignant of Montreal has researched the high rate of suicide among aboriginal youth in northern Quebec.
He’s observed an underlying sense of hopelessness for those who take their lives.
And even though the residential school program ended decades ago, Dr. Tousignant cites fallout from that program as one of factors leading to high suicide rates.
DR. MICHEL TOUSIGNANT: Because a lot of people were taken to residential schools, they lost the sense of what is a family. And when they came back and had children they were completely lost as to what to do with children because they had never been in a family. And they had been abused on many levels at the school. And so they were also I would say psychologically broken and because they had a lot of trauma that also is associated with alcohol consumption. And so all these factors were grouped together and that’s why we have much more neglected children in the present generation than there was before.
Dr. Tousignant says breaking the culture of silence is important in suicide prevention.
Thanks today to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
FOR INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
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Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Program Date: 2010-10-26