Abstract
Suicide is a preventable public health problem and a leading cause of death in the United States. Despite recognized need for community-based strategies for suicide prevention, most suicide prevention programs focus on individual-level change. This article presents seven first person accounts of Finding the Light Within, a community mobilization initiative to reduce the stigma associated with suicide through public arts participation that took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 2011 through 2012. The stigma associated with suicide is a major challenge to suicide prevention, erecting social barriers to effective prevention and treatment and enhancing risk factors for people struggling with suicidal ideation and recovery after losing a loved one to suicide. This project engaged a large and diverse audience and built a new community around suicide prevention through participatory public art, including community design and production of a large public mural about suicide, storytelling and art workshops, and a storytelling website. We present this project as a model for how arts participation can address suicide on multiple fronts—from raising awareness and reducing stigma, to promoting community recovery, to providing healing for people and communities in need.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
American Association of Suicidology. (2012). Suicide in the USA based on current (2009) statistics (vol. 2012).
CDC (2008). Strategic direction for the prevention of suicidal behavior: Promoting individual, family, and community connectedness to prevent suicidal behavior. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/Suicide_Strategic_Direction_Full_Version-a.pdf.
CDC. (2010). Suicide: Facts at a Glance. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/Suicide_DataSheet-a.pdf.
CDC. (2011). Youth risk behavior survey. Retrieved Aug 28, 2012, from www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/yrbs.
Chandler, M. J., & Lalonde, C. (1998). Cultural continuity as a hedge against suicide in Canada’s first nations. Transcultural Psychiatry, 35(2), 191.
Corrigan, P. W. (2004). How stigma interferes with mental health care. American Psychologist, 59(7), 614.
Corrigan, P. W., Kerr, A., & Knudsen, L. (2005). The stigma of mental illness: Explanatory models and methods for change. Applied and Preventive Psychology, 11(3), 179–190.
Cox, R. S., & Perry, K. M. E. (2011). Like a fish out of water: Reconsidering disaster recovery and the role of place and social capital in community disaster resilience. American Journal of Community Psychology, 48(3), 395–411.
Crosby, A. E., Ortega, L., & Melanson, C. (2011). Self-directed violence surveillance: Uniform definitions and recommended data elements, version 1.0. Atlanta, GA: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC.
Evans, A. C. J., Golden Heriza, J., & White, W. L. (2012). A photographic essay the art of recovery in Philadelphia: Murals as instruments of personal and community healing retrieved Apr 1, 2013, from http://www.congress60.org/AppData/Document/2011-The-Art-of-Recovery-in-Philadelphia.pdf.
Goldsmith, S. K. (2002). Reducing suicide: A national imperative. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press.
Goldston, D. B., Molock, S. D., Whitbeck, L. B., Murakami, J. L., Zayas, L. H., & Hall, G. C. N. (2008). Cultural considerations in adolescent suicide prevention and psychosocial treatment. American Psychologist, 63(1), 14.
Hacking, S., Secker, J., Kent, L., Shenton, J., & Spandler, H. (2006). Mental health and arts participation: The state of the art in England. The Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health, 126(3), 121.
Hassan, R. (1995). Effects of newspaper stories on the incidence of suicide in Australia: A research note. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 29(3), 480–483.
Hoge, C. W., & Castro, C. A. (2012). Preventing suicides in US service members and veterans. JAMA, 308(7), 671–672.
Joiner Jr, T. E., Van Orden, K. A., Witte, T. K., & Rudd, M. D. (2009). The interpersonal theory of suicide: Guidance for working with suicidal clients: American Psychological Association.
Knox, K. L., Conwell, Y., & Caine, E. D. (2004). If suicide is a public health problem, what are we doing to prevent it? American Journal of Public Health, 94(1), 37.
Knox, K. L., Litts, D. A., Talcott, G. W., Feig, J. C., & Caine, E. D. (2003). Risk of suicide and related adverse outcomes after exposure to a suicide prevention programme in the US air force: Cohort study. BMJ, 327(7428), 1376.
Kochanek, K. D., Jianquan, X., Murphy, S. L., Minino, A. M., & Kung, H.-C. (2011). Deaths: Final data from 2009. National Vital Statistics Report, 60(3), 1–167.
Livingston, J. D., & Boyd, J. E. (2010). Correlates and consequences of internalized stigma for people living with mental illness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Social Science and Medicine, 71(12), 2150–2161.
Matlin, S. L., Molock, S. D., & Tebes, J. K. (2011). Suicidality and depression among African American adolescents: The role of family and peer support and community connectedness. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 81(1), 108–117.
Miller, D. N., Eckert, T. L., & Mazza, J. J. (2010). Suicide prevention programs in the schools: A review and public health perspective. School Psychology Review, 38(2), 168.
Norris, F. H., Stevens, S. P., Pfefferbaum, B., Wyche, K. F., & Pfefferbaum, R. L. (2008). Community resilience as a metaphor, theory, set of capacities, and strategy for disaster readiness. American Journal of Community Psychology, 41(1), 127–150.
Pennebaker, J. W., & Chung, C. K. (2011). Expressive writing and its links to mental and physical health. In H. S. Friedman (Ed.), Oxford handbook of health psychology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Rappaport, J. (2000). Community narratives: Tales of terror and joy. American Journal of Community Psychology, 28(1), 1–24.
Sarason, S. B. (1972). The creation of settings and the future societies. Cambridge: Brookline Books.
Scocco, P., Castriotta, C., Toffol, E., & Preti, A. (2012). Stigma of suicide attempt (STOSA) scale and stigma of suicide and suicide survivor (STOSASS) scale: Two new assessment tools. Psychiatry Research, 200(2–3), 872–878.
Stuckey, H. L., & Nobel, J. (2010). The connection between art, healing, and public health: A review of current literature. American Journal of Public Health, 100(2), 254.
Sudak, H., Maxim, K., & Carpenter, M. (2008). Suicide and stigma: A review of the literature and personal reflections. Academic Psychiatry, 32(2), 136–142.
US Department of Health and Human Services, & National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. (2012). 2012 National strategy for suicide prevention: Goals and objectives for action. Washington, D.C.: HHS.
US Public Health Service. (1999). The surgeon general’s call to action to prevent suicide. DC: Washington.
Wexler, L. M., & Gone, J. P. (2012). Culturally responsive suicide prevention in indigenous communities: Unexamined assumptions and new possibilities. American Journal of Public Health, 102(5), 800–806.
White, W. L., Evans, A. C., & Lamb, R. (2010). Community recovery Retrieved April 1, 2013, from http://congress60.org/AppData/Document/2010-Community-Recovery.pdf.
Whiteford, D., DeBrule, D. S., & Drapeau, C. (2012). Reducing depression and anxiety for suicide survivors with an innovative writing intervention. Paper presented at the 45th American Association on Suicidology Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD.
Woodfill, D. S. (2012). Alarm goes off over firefighter-suicide rate. Phoenix: Arizona Republic.
Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Thomas B. Scattergood Foundation, and a National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) research training grant (T32 DA 019426) to Jacob Kraemer Tebes.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
10464_2013_9581_MOESM3_ESM.jpg
Close-up of the left side of the Finding the Light Within mural showing the quilt and community of people carrying the quilt (JPG 851 KB)
10464_2013_9581_MOESM4_ESM.jpg
Close-up of the right side of the Finding the Light Within mural showing the quilt and community of people carrying the quilt (JPG 1360 KB)
10464_2013_9581_MOESM5_ESM.jpg
Photograph of firefighters painting at a community paint day in remembrance of firefighters lost to suicide (JPG 3600 KB)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mohatt, N.V., Singer, J.B., Evans, A.C. et al. A Community’s Response to Suicide Through Public Art: Stakeholder Perspectives from the Finding the Light Within Project. Am J Community Psychol 52, 197–209 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-013-9581-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-013-9581-7