A Psychoanalytic Thematic Analysis of what Primary School Staff say about Suicide-Communication in Socially Disadvantaged Children

Abstract

Abstract The challenge of preventing suicide remains an on-going domestic and global concern. Early intervention is indicated although dedicated research regarding suicide-communication (S-C) in children of primary school-age is sparse. The research found impetus in primary school-based clinical practice, with suicide-communicating children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Sixteen primary school-based staff, including teachers, teaching assistants, pastoral and safeguarding practitioners, counsellors and psychotherapists, from schools serving socially disadvantaged catchments, were interviewed in an effort to answer the research question: ‘What do primary school-based staff say about suicide-communicating children?’ These interviews were then subject to a psychoanalytically informed thematic analysis where both semantic and latent content was interrogated. It was found that what primary school-based staff say about socially disadvantaged children’s suicide-communication conveys that they understand suicide-communication in terms of environmental circumstances. These can be seen as sequelae of social disadvantage and adverse childhood experiences (ACE). This was then identified by the researcher as ‘social bruising,’ which when diffracted through a Baradian intra-action within a psychoanalytic triangulation of Freud’s (1920) ‘protective shield,’ Winnicott’s (1960) ‘holding’, and Khan’s (1963) ‘cumulative trauma’, finds a new agential reality. Intra-acting what primary school staff say about suicide-communicating children with psychoanalysis and agential realism finds the following. Suicide-communication in children can be understood in terms of social disadvantage (the unfacilitating environment), and its sequelae. This diffracts through the family producing cumulative trauma, breach of protective shield and holding, resulting in ‘Familial Abruption.’ Familial abruption, in turn, diffracts through the child resulting in cumulative trauma and breach of protective shield, producing ‘Psymatic Abruption.’ Psymatic abruption, in turn, diffracts through the social world of the child resulting in breach of protective shield and holding, producing ‘Social Abruption’. The diffractive product of these accumulative abruptions is ‘social bleeding,’ of which suicide-communication is one expression. The findings, in collaboration with the existing suicide literature, offer an opportunity to build a socio-clinical, suicidological, material-discursive, risk assessment, suicide-prevention inventory. Keywords: ACE. Agential Realism. Early Intervention. Primary Schools. Psychoanalysis. Social Disadvantage. Suicide-Communication. Suicide Prevention. Trauma. Young Children.