Personal Persistence, Identity Development, and Suicide A Study of Native and Non-Native North American Adolescents

by Chandler, Michael; Lalonde, Christopher; Sokol, Bryan W.; Hallett, Darcy

• ISBN13: 9781405118798
• ISBN10: 1405118792
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-08-01
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Why are young persons so over represented among those who choose to end their own lives? And why are these already elevated rates of suicide still higher among Aboriginal youth? The developmental and cross-cultural studies reported in this Monograph demonstrate that the beginnings of answers to these questions lie in disruptions to young people's developing conceptions of personal or cultural persistence. Grounded in a series of normative studies indicating that Aboriginal Canadian and non-Aboriginal Canadian youth ordinarily follow distinctive pathways of identity development. The findings reported demonstrate that those who fail to own their personal past, and their as yet unrealized future, are at especially heightened risk of suicide. At the level of whole communities, the efforts of Aboriginal groups to reclaim their cultural past and to direct the future course of their civic lives are similarly associated with dramatically lower youth suicide rates.

Author Biography

Michael J. Chandler is Distinguished CIHR/MSFHR Professor in Developmental Psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His research centers on the study of young people’s social-cognitive development, especially as such age-related changes bear on matters of interest to developmental psychopathologists and health professionals. Most recently his work has come to focus on cross-cultural comparisons of epistemic and identity development as these differently unfold in Canada’s Aboriginal and culturally mainstream youth.

Christopher E. Lalonde is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Victoria. His research interests include social-cognitive development in childhood and adolescence and the influence of culture on identity development and determinants of health.

Bryan W. Sokol is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Simon Fraser University. In addition to his interests in identity development, Bryan’s research includes the study of children’s developing epistemic and moral reasoning.

Darcy Hallett is a Ph.D. candidate in Developmental Psychology at the University of British Columbia. In addition to the subject matter of this Monograph and to identity development in general, Darcy’s research interests include epistemological development and children’s understanding of mathematics.

Table of Contents

Contents

Introduction

The Antimony of Sameness and Change

On Self-Continuity and its Developmental Vicissitudes

What Young People Have to Say about the Paradox of Sameness and Change

Self-Continuity and Youth Suicide

From Self-Continuity to Cultural Continuity

Aboriginal Youth Suicide

Culture as a Set Point in the Choice between Narrativist and Essentialist Self-Continuity Warranting Practices

Conclusions

Appendix: Sample Questions from the Personal Persistence Interview

Commentary

Treading Fearlessly: A Commentary on Personal Persistence, Identity Development, and Suicide

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