‘I Can’t Even Talk to My Parents About It’: South Sudanese Youth Advocates’ Perspectives on Suicide Through Reflexive Discussions and Collaborative Poetic Inquiry

The issue of suicide has garnered considerable attention in refugee scholarship, where research examines how unique forced migration and resettlement challenges exacerbate risks and vulnerabilities to suicide. However, there are gaps in understanding the social and cultural factors shaping the lived experience of suicide in refugee communities. Using the example of young people of African backgrounds in Australia, this paper presents a collaboration among two academics and two South Sudanese youth advocates to explore the sociocultural factors impacting suicidality through reflexive discussions and collaborative poetry. This combined approach offered a unique and nuanced conceptual and methodological framework to contribute culturally specific narratives to critical suicide studies and challenge western-centric and biomedical perspectives on suicide. The process highlighted (i) the lack of dialogue about suicide in the South Sudanese community and (ii) the absence of community-based support structures to address suicide. This paper provides useful insights into the culturally specific context of suicide, adding refugee perspectives to the discipline of critical suicide studies.