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NUNAVUT - Communities in Nunavut will soon have the opportunity to provide input into a new territory-wide suicide prevention strategy.

Through a working group on suicide prevention – a partnership between the Government of Nunavut, Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and the Isaksimagit Inuusirmi Katujjiqatigiit Embrace Life Council – four teams of two facilitators each will be visiting communities across the territory this spring to hold public consultations.

"For people to feel that this prevention strategy would be successful, they need to feel they are a part of it," said Natan Obed, director of social and cultural development at NTI.

The consultations follow the recent release of the working group's discussion paper summarizing the root causes of suicidal behaviour and methods that have been effective in reducing it.

The working group hopes to have collected all the feedback by the end of June so it can draft the strategy in the summer for approval by leaders in the early fall.

The overarching goal of the working group's efforts is to develop a common understanding of the social determinants underlying suicidal behaviour and a co-ordinated, holistic effort among families, communities, various organizations and government to address these factors.

As Nunavut's youth are continually losing their friends to suicide, it is important they be involved in any kind of prevention effort, said Jesse Mike, NTI's youth policy analyst and president of the Embrace Life Council.

"No matter where you go, where there's a lot of youth, suicide always comes up," she said. "It's the young people who want to try so hard to stop it."

Over the past decade, Nunavut has averaged 27 suicides per year, 83 per cent of which were committed by men, most under 25 years of age. The rate of death by suicide among males aged 15 to 24 is 28 times higher than the Canadian average.

"Here, unfortunately, it (suicide) has become the norm," said Mike. "It's kind of even always the first thing you think of when you hear of a young person dying."

In working on the discussion paper, "the big eye-opener for me was the different components of suicide prevention and how you actually can quantify what you want to do and measure success," Obed said.

He added the announcement in March of suicide intervention training was a "huge step" towards giving Nunavummiut the skills and knowledge they need to help those around them who are most at risk.

Within the discussion paper, one of the main social factors of suicidal behaviour is historical trauma among Inuit – being "coerced off the land by the government into settled communities, or having been sent to residential school," for example – evident by the "very low rate of death by suicide" in Nunavut up until the last few decades.

"I think every issue goes back to historical trauma," said Mike, stressing the importance for youth to learn about these painful parts of history.

"It's not them … it's what their parents went through," she said.

In order to encourage a co-ordinated effort across the territory, one of the working group's suggestions is to establish an office of suicide prevention that would oversee initiatives and provide resources to help implement the strategy.

"The Government of Nunavut created Embrace Life for suicide prevention, but it's an independent organization and the board of directors has interpreted their mandate to focus almost exclusively on life affirmation," said Obed. "We didn't want to change that."

While celebrating life is important to suicide prevention, it is also crucial that the government be held accountable for addressing the social factors that give rise to the high rate of suicide in Nunavut, he said.

"We see this issue as a very broad issue that goes across many departments," said Obed. "If there's an office of suicide prevention, there's a more direct accountability back to government."

While life-affirming programs – such as land programs and hip-hop workshops – are just one component of suicide prevention, Mike has found them to be very beneficial.

"To me, a life-affirming approach is a really good thing," she said.