Dialogue for Life

Conference Offers Strategies To Tackle Suicide

by Patrick Quinn Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

At this year’s annual Dialogue for Life conference, held at Montreal’s Sheraton Hotel February 14-18, workshop and training organizers shared evolving attitudes and strategies for addressing suicide prevention in Indigenous communities.

“The one-on-one sessions with healers, workshops and training are a source of information but also, they come to recharge,” said new association director Lori May Dubé, who was hired in November. “It’s part of their wellbeing.”

Presented by the First Nation and Inuit Suicide Prevention Association of Quebec and Labrador (FNISPAQL), this year’s theme was mental health in the context of the Covid pandemic, which forced the conference’s cancellation in 2020. As the non-profit association stabilizes, leaders are planning the next edition for its usual time in November.

“It was suggested that there be two conferences per year, possibly one in Quebec City,” shared Dubé. “I’d also like to go see communities. We’re still recuperating from the pandemic and life is costing more – things that have an effect on mental health.”

A Sixties Scoop survivor whose mother is missing or murdered, and whose brother took his own life, Dubé has been a social worker in Montreal’s First Nations community since FNISPAQL’s creation in 2001. With over 300 members across Quebec, the association has grown to encompass an expanding variety of perspectives about mental health.

“I see in the last few years more openness to talk about suicide, a slow destigmatization of mental health and addiction issues,” explained Dubé. “There’s less shame and blaming. The [public inquiry] commissions validated individuals’ journeys with different issues. It’s very positive but shows a need for more funding.”

During the two-day Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST), Kateri Oesterreich and Chad Diabo from Kahnawake Mohawk Nation provided standardized tools for participants to de-escalate moments of crisis so more at-risk individuals remain safe within their communities rather than being taken away for medical treatment.