Conference Agenda

Although suicide is more common among people who are unemployed, there is increasing recognition that a specific focus on suicides occurring in the context of work is both conceptually and practically important. “Workplace suicide” is difficult to define, as the distinction between suicide connected to work and suicide that simply occurs at work is not always clear. Nevertheless, the workplace offers an important lens through which to examine structural and organizational risks that are frequently overlooked when suicide prevention is framed solely as an issue of individual vulnerability. While many risk factors for suicide are shared with the general population, work introduces additional exposures, pressures, and opportunities that can amplify risk or constrain help-seeking. These include the characteristics of the job (for example, repeated exposure to trauma, moral injury, isolation, physical danger, or high emotional labour), organizational culture, and the way work is structured, supported, and supervised.

This perspective is particularly relevant in public safety personnel and other “always on” occupations where mental health needs are high, stigma remains entrenched, and workplace identity is central. In these sectors, individual-level interventions such as screening, education, and clinical support are necessary but insufficient. Organizational policies, leadership practices, staffing models, critical incident response, and return-to-work systems can directly contribute to suicide risk or protection, yet they have seldom been systematically evaluated. This presentation will draw on examples from public service personnel to illustrate how modifying aspects of work – including workload, supervision, exposure to distressing material, and access to rest and recovery – may form part of a comprehensive prevention strategy. We argue that research, surveillance, and intervention need to expand beyond the individual to examine how workplace structures, expectations, and cultures influence suicidal behaviour. Addressing suicide as a system-level problem, embedded in organizational life, may open new avenues for prevention where current approaches have plateaued.

This paper explores how an international social justice approach might help us to rethink current understandings and responses to the phenomenon of work-related suicide. Extending beyond a potentially narrow mental health perspective, a social justice approach emphasises the need to confront the varied (social, economic, political, cultural, historical) conditions that make life unliveable for some workers. It is concerned with transforming the structural conditions of work in contemporary globalised economies, not just interventions that address the impact of work for individuals.

While workplace mental health strategies tend to rely on therapeutic methods rooted in psychological concepts of wellness, resilience, and mindfulness that focus on the individual rather than on structure as a locus for change, we conceptualise suicide differently as a matter of collective social justice that concerns the structures, rules, and policies that shape all our working lives.

Although work or working conditions have been identified as causal factors in an estimated 70,000 suicides worldwide (10-13% of all suicides globally), this remains a largely undocumented phenomenon, often missing from official statistics, policies, and prevention programmes. In a majority of countries worldwide, work-related suicides are still legally unrecognised, statistically unrecorded, and are rarely investigated as work-related deaths. In the face of processes of ‘invisibilisation’, it is crucial to explore alternative social justice perspectives that address urgent issues of legal recognition, accountability, and access to justice for suicidal individuals and their families.

This paper presents preliminary findings from a four-year Wellcome Trust-funded project on work-related suicides in the UK, France, and Canada that brings together qualitative suicide researchers with legal scholars in order to develop new ways of understanding and tackling this phenomenon. Our project combines in-depth qualitative analysis of selected suicide cases across three national settings with a comparative analysis of legal and policy frameworks grounded in a “law in context” approach.

This paper rethinks work-related suicide in Canada through a social justice perspective. Drawing on preliminary findings from a four-year Wellcome Trust-funded research project examining work-related suicides in the UK, France and Canada, we consider how the cases that gain media attention in Canada conform to narrow scripts of exceptionalism—specifically narratives of traumatic exposure among first responders or exceptional workplace abuse. These patterns of recognition establish the boundaries that determine which cases might prompt discussion of work's relationship to suicide, even as work-related suicide remains legally unrecognized and statistically unrecorded in Canada.

A social justice framework interrogates how social, economic, political, cultural, and historical conditions converge to make work incompatible with life itself. This approach prioritizes structural transformation of working conditions under global capitalism over individualized therapeutic or wellness interventions. Through analysis of cases that achieve media visibility alongside those from our qualitative research that remain unrecognized within these narrow parameters, we interrogate how these scripts of exceptionalism operate to preserve existing structures of work while foreclosing recognition of systemic violence.

Our analysis reveals how these patterns of recognition serve multiple functions: they individualize collective conditions, contain employer liability, and maintain the legitimacy of work as currently organized under neoliberal capitalism. This selective recognition benefits employers, state actors, and compensation systems while rendering unintelligible the experiences of workers facing chronic precarity, impossible productivity demands, and the slow violence of dehumanizing labour conditions—particularly among racialized and gendered workers whose structural vulnerabilities exceed the narrow frames of trauma or harassment.

We conclude by conceptualising suicide as a matter of collective social justice that concerns the conditions, rules, and policies that shape all our working lives, demanding new frameworks that recognize work's relationship to death beyond therapeutic interventions or anti-bullying policies.

Introduction
Healthcare professionals have an increased risk of suicide. In addition to their access to means, many work within cultures of blame, retribution, and perfectionism that contribute to abnormal levels of distress. Reforming the culture of health services can therefore make an important contribution to reducing suicide in healthcare. Central to this reform is building a culture of trust, learning, and forward-looking accountability that fosters psychological safety (Dekker 2017).

In Australia, health systems in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria have adopted the Zero Suicide Healthcare Framework, within which Restorative, Just, and Learning Culture (RJLC) plays a critical role. RJLC provides a framework for understanding clinical work, supporting learning, and mitigating outdated paradigms of risk prediction, hindsight bias, and pessimism regarding preventability (Turner 2020).

Evidence from the UK’s Mersey Care NHS Trust demonstrates improvements associated with restorative approaches, including reduced suspensions, increased reporting, greater willingness to seek support, reduced illness-related absence, and improved retention (MATEC 2019).

Methods
A blended learning program incorporating four online knowledge-based modules and face-to-face learning was piloted across three health services to support RJLC development.

Results
Evaluation findings indicated that the online modules delivered high satisfaction (80%) and relevance (80%). The face-to-face workshop scored lower quantitatively (50%) but was described in qualitative interviews as the most impactful component, offering dialogue, questions, and practical integration. Based on feedback, the program has been restructured to meet the needs of three audiences: Executive Leadership and Boards, Operational Leaders, and Health Service Staff.

Learning Outcomes
Participants will be able to:
• Distinguish retributive culture from restorative, just, and learning culture.
• Describe key drivers of psychological safety in healthcare.
• Apply RJLC principles to adverse-incident reviews.

Conclusion
Applying RJLC principles enhances psychological safety for healthcare staff. Leaders have a responsibility to reform organizational culture to reduce suicide among the healthcare workforce.

Learning objective: The aim of this study is to generate insights into how workplaces can support and respond to the needs of middle-aged men (40-70) with suicidal ideation.

Background: In the Netherlands, middle-aged men (40-70) have the highest suicide rates. Work can operate both as a stressor and a protective factor for mental health. However, how workplaces can support middle-aged men experiencing suicidal ideation remains unclear. Gaining baseline insight of work-related contributions to suicidal ideation and the support needs of men seems vital for designing workplaces that appropriately address the needs of middle-aged men.

Methods: Data were collected through web-based and offline surveys from January to September 2025 (n=510). Participants included middle-aged men (40-70) who experience(d) suicidal ideation in the past three years. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize work-related contributing factors to suicide and needs for support.

Results: Many men (67%) reported that work contributed to their suicidal ideation, e.g., through high work pressure, lack of support from supervisors or management, and an unpleasant work atmosphere. Most men indicated needs related to coping with suicidal ideation, such as the desire to talk about it, support from their environment, and professional help. Men were also asked whether they required support in the workplace to manage their suicidal ideation, with the majority (68%) indicating that they did not need this. Among the men expressing a need for support at work, few received sufficient help.

Discussion: The findings demonstrate the impact of work-related factors on suicidal ideation among middle-aged men and reveal a gap between needs and support provision. This underscores the importance of developing workplace strategies that reduce stressors, offer timely psychosocial support, and provide referral to appropriate external resources.