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The Role of Resilience in Suicide Prevention and for Recovery After Suicide Attempt: Learning from 80 Years of Resilience Research

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Suicide Risk Assessment and Prevention

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Abstract

For some years, suicide rates have been increasing, not decreasing, despite concerted efforts by global agencies and countries’ national strategies and innovations in the clinical care of those most vulnerable. In Australia, suicide rates had fluctuated around a slow decline for some years and then began to rise again, reaching the same rate of 12.5 per 100,000 in 2017 as Australia saw 50 years ago (Suicide prevention Australia. Turning points: imagine a world without suicide. 2019, September. www.suicidepreventionaust.org).

Many studies have explored the factors that placed individuals at risk of suicide and global prevention strategies have been based on reducing these risks and building protective factors or addressing specific risks, such as depression, mental illnesses, and other mental health disorders. Research on resilience, however, has only been emerging in the suicidology literature over the last decade, yet there is much that can be learnt from those who have been resilient in the face of adversity, whose lives were often characterized by risk and vulnerability but who navigated a path to eventual well-being, even flourishing.

There has, however, been extensive research into those who have been resilient in the face of trauma, which has been building since World War II. This chapter provides an abridged review of this 80 years of research into resilience for the contribution it could make to innovation in suicide prevention and better support recovery and prevention of relapse after suicidality or suicide attempt.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Menzies Health Institute, Queensland, Australia

    Anita M. Chauvin

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  1. Anita M. Chauvin
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Correspondence to Anita M. Chauvin .

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  1. Department of Neurosciences, Sapienza University of Rome, ROMA, Roma, Italy

    Maurizio Pompili

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Chauvin, A.M. (2022). The Role of Resilience in Suicide Prevention and for Recovery After Suicide Attempt: Learning from 80 Years of Resilience Research. In: Pompili, M. (eds) Suicide Risk Assessment and Prevention. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41319-4_101-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41319-4_101-1

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