Introduction

This chapter provides a general explanation and overview of a social justice approach to suicide and suicide prevention. A social justice approach to suicide is contrasted with other dominant frameworks that seek to understand and prevent suicide. This chapter argues that the proper aim of a social justice approach to suicide is not to refute dominant bio-medical and psychological approaches to suicide but to contextualize and supplement this dominant understanding with more explicitly political, structural, and socio-cultural accounts of the factors involved in rising rates of suicide, especially as these rates are concentrated within vulnerable populations and the intersections among them. A broad overview of each of the chapters in this volume is provided.