Revisioning Distress and Nurse Suicidality through a Feminist, Critical Suicidology Lens

There are 30 million nurses worldwide, 90% of whom are women and a significant proportion from the global ethnic majority. In the UK, the suicide rate among women nurses is 23% higher than women in other occupational groups and are elevated in other high-income countries too. The majority of evidence on suicidality in healthcare professionals, including nurses, derives from quantitative, retrospective studies, using data from death registers. Such paradigms focus on individual risk factors such as psychiatric illness, marital status and age. This approach pathologises and individualises suicidality which minimises or silences diverse women nurses’ experiences, realities and contexts in both research and policy.

In this project funded by the Wellcome Trust, we aim to explore the construction of nurse distress, suicidality and suicide prevention in research and policy and identify the political, social and personal consequences. We will investigate multi-stakeholder perspectives, including nurses’, policy-makers, researchers and the public’s understandings of contexts impacting nurses’ distress and suicidality.

We will use feminist, decolonising and critical suicidology methods and theory to critique current dominant discourses. We will undertake five studies: a critical literature and policy review; public engagement using world café methods; exploring the experiences of internationally qualified nurses using storytelling methods; exploring the relationship between psychological distress and moral distress; and assessing the impact of fitness to practice investigations on nurses.

Outcomes of this study will include a revisioning of the research landscape; a significant shift in our understanding of contexts contributing to distress and suicidality; and development of socially engaged allyship models of support with the public and other constituents. Our work will inform new or revised suicide prevention policies to reduce distress and suicidality and shape the UK’s regulatory body, the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s, Fitness to Practice investigations which may be contributing to suicidality.