Despite well-established knowledge that LGBT+ young people are more likely than their cisgender, heterosexual peers to feel suicidal, little is known about why this is the case or how to prevent it. In this talk Hazel Marzetti will attempt to go beyond numbers, to qualitatively explore how LGBT+ young people  make sense of suicidal distress themselves. As part of this narrative inquiry, she will call the established ‘neatness’ of language used to describe suicide into question, consider the ways that barrier to accessing support services shape the articulation of suicidal distress, and explore the multiple ways in which suicide can be understood both as resistance and as response.

Dr Hazel Marzetti is a post-doctoral researcher working on the Suicide in/as Politics project. Hazel’s research interests centre on critical suicide studies, LGBT+ mental health, the role of emotions in research practices, and qualitative approaches to health research. You can find her on Twitter @hazelmarzetti, contact her by email hazel.marzetti@ed.ac.uk and find resources relating to research at www.hazelmarzetti.com