A Missing Piece in the Puzzle: Exploring the Phenomenon of Suicide Recovery in Developing a Recovery-Focused Suicide Management Program

Abstract

The primary aim of suicidology is to understand the phenomenon of suicide by increasing its predictability and prevention to reduce the suicide rate. However, the rate of suicide remained obstinately high. This phenomenological study explored the different perspectives of 5 suicide attempt survivors and 7 mental health professionals on suicide recovery and its process. Phenomenological methods were used to analyze the participants' lived experiences through reduction, description, and finding the essence. Four essential emergent elements elucidate these perspectives, implying the general status of the current suicide healthcare system, vital in understanding suicide and suicide recovery, namely: (1) contextual elements: factors that describe how the participants view suicidality and suicide recovery; (2) facilitative elements: elements that lead to and affect the youths' suicide recovery; (3) impeding elements: factors that hinder suicide recovery; and (4) procedural elements: conditions that pertain to the steps in suicide management and intervention program. By integrating the findings of this current phenomenological study with the Inflorescence Model of Suicide Recovery, a suicide recovery-focused paradigm for suicide care and management was conceptualized. Exploring suicide recovery and its process found that there are different perspectives on suicide among suicide attempt survivors and mental health professionals; thereby, showing the gaps or cracks that exist in the health care system. This fragmentation results in deaths of suicide despite psychological and psychiatric treatments. Thus, the findings were used to conceptualize the Inflorescence Suicide Management Program (ISMP) that hopes to contribute to establishing a structured, systemic, and collaborative health care system.