Black Women's Views on Suicide - P. Jean Ricketts

Suicide is a multi-faceted human experience that threatens and harms Black communities.Historical data, critical theories, and extant research literature suggest that such threats and harms result from interactions between macrosystemic systemic forces and individual level meaning-making processes. To explore the dynamic and nuanced complexities between systemic forces and deaths often labelled "suicides" in contemporary U.S. Black communities, this project centered and amplified the critical perspectives of fourteen Black female clinicians. Because of their marginalized identities, intersectional lived experiences, critical orientation, and clinical training, these participants were wellpositioned to analyze and understand the degrees to which suicides in Black communities are associated with oppressive macrosystemic dynamics and/or individual-level psychological factors.