In this dialogue, Fiona Malpass and Jennifer White explored different kinds of questions about the ethics of suicide prevention. Rather than bringing answers, they interrogated the implications of doing harm in the name of good, considering their positionalities as white saviours, and contributng to the critical conversation around suicide research and prevention with a feminist and relational ethics that celebrates the messy, the entangled, the collective.

The Critical Suicide Studies Network: Statement of Ethics can be found here and attendees were invited to read it before the seminar.

Attendees responses to Fiona and Jennifer’s question ‘what is one action that you would like to take next to advance this conversation further’ have been collated here: Jennifer and Fiona actions.

Fiona Malpass works at Mind in Camden as the Hearing Voices Project manager, working with young people, prisons, forensic settings and immigration removal centres, and the London Hearing Voices network. They are also studying Philosophy and Mental Health at UCLan. Fiona has personal experience of many forms of distress, including suicidality, and uses this in her work to build connections, as well as to challenge the status quo and provide provocations to ways of thinking and working.

Jennifer White is a professor and former director of the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria, Canada. Jennifer has over twenty years’ experience working as a practitioner and researcher in suicide prevention. Jennifer is one of the founders of the Critical Suicidology Network, a growing international network of scholars exploring alternatives to the biomedical approaches to suicide prevention we have inherited.