Personal Persistence, Identity Development, and Suicide

This Monograph demonstrates that disruptions to young people's developing conceptions of personal or cultural persistence begin to explain the suicide rates among Aboriginal Canadian and non-Aboriginal Canadian youth.

Presents a developmental and cross-cultural investigation into suicide among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadian youth.Links disruptions to developing conceptions of personal or cultural persistence with suicide ratesFinds, through a series of normative studies, that Aboriginal Canadian and non-Aboriginal Canadian youth ordinarily follow distinctive pathways of identity development.Demonstrates that those who fail to own their personal past, and their as yet unrealized future, are at especially heightened risk of suicide, while those who live in communities making an effort to reclaim their cultural past, and to direct the future course of their civic lives, are at dramatically lower risk of suicide.