Poster Presentation National Suicide Prevention Conference 2025

Influence of culturally-specific risk and protective factors on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicide mortality (#144)

Mandy Gibson 1
  1. Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention, Griffith University, Mount Gravatt, QLD, Australia

Background:

The higher suicide rates experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia has been widely documented1. However, there is limited evidence of effective preventative strategies2. A contributor is that many are misaligned to the unique risk and protective factors and trajectories experienced by First Nations peoples3. While the impacts of colonisation, such as community and cultural dislocation, are widely acknowledged as implicit in current Indigenous suicide rates, there has been limited examination of the effects of the social and environmental legacies of colonisation (such as racism and discrimination) or the potential protective effects of community empowerment and cultural connectedness to reduce suicide mortality rates. 

 

This session will present findings from a retrospective mortality study examining the associations between experiences of culturally specific risk and protective factors within communities with suicide mortality rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, specifically the effects of discrimination, Indigenous language use and cultural social capital.

 

Methods and materials:

Age‐standardised suicide rates (ASRs) were calculated using First Nations suicide fatalities recorded between 2009-2015 and Statistical Areas Level 2 (SA2s) population data from the 2011 Census. Small geographical area estimates of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS) survey results were used to classify high and low levels of discrimination, Indigenous language use, and cultural social capital at the SA2 level4. Rate Ratios (RRs) were used to compare ASRs in areas with high and low levels of risk and protective factors. Effects of other ‘general’ community-level factors (remoteness, socio-economic resources) will be presented for comparison.

 

Results:

ASSRs were significantly higher in areas where more of the First Nations residents experienced recent discrimination (RR=1.33; 95%CI=1.05–1.70, p=0.02), and the age-specific suicide rate was significantly higher for those aged 25-34 in areas with more discrimination (RR=1.67; 95%CI=1.04–2.74, p=0.03). Areas in which more First Nations residents spoke Indigenous languages and communities had significantly lower ASRs.  By comparison, the ASRs were not significantly higher in areas with regional and remote communities areas with lower socioeconomic resources.

 

Conclusion:

These findings highlight the need for suicide prevention frameworks grounded from the unique risk and protective factors of First Nations people, and provides evidence for novel approaches to suicide prevention, such strategies promote Languages and cultural practices. Critically, these results reflect the public health risk of discrimination and provide evidence for enacting strategies to reduce institutional and personal discrimination to reduce suicide.

  1. 1. Leske, S., Crompton, D., & Kõlves, K. (2019). Suicide in Queensland: Annual Report 2019. Griffith University.
  2. 2. Leske, S., Paul, E., Gibson, M., Little, B., Wenitong, M., & Kolves, K. (2020). Global systematic review of the effects of suicide prevention interventions in Indigenous peoples. In Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health (Vol. 74, Issue 12). https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2019-212368
  3. 3. Dudgeon, P., Calma, T., & Holland, C. (2017). The context and causes of the suicide of Indigenous people in Australia. Journal of Indigenous Wellbeing, 2(2).
  4. 4. Vidyattama, Y., Tanton, R., & Biddle, N. (2015). Estimating small-area Indigenous cultural participation from synthetic survey data. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 47(5), 1211-1228. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X15592314