Suicide Among Aboriginal People in Canada - Institut universitaire ...

Chapter 2the economic status of Aboriginal people and the local general populations, even when Aboriginal peopleleave the reserve. Although the situation is improving, on average, Aboriginal adults receive less educationthan non-Aboriginal adults. The 1986 Census indicated that 37 per cent of all adult status Indians hadless than a grade 9 education, more than twice the total Canadian rate of 17 per cent; about 45 per centof status Indians on-reserve were functionally illiterate compared to 24 per cent of Indians off-reserve(Medical Services Branch Steering Committee on Native Mental Health, 1991b). In 1996, 52 per cent ofnon-reserve Aboriginal people aged 20 to 24 had not completed high school. This decreased slightly to 48per cent by 2001 (O’Donnell and Tait, 2003).Living conditions on many Aboriginal communities and reserves are poor. Crowded dwellings areapproximately 16 times more common among Aboriginal groups than Canadians in general (MedicalServices Branch Steering Committee on Native Mental Health, 1991b). Despite recent improvements,provision of adequate water supply and sewage disposal also continues to be a problem in many settlements.About 17 per cent of Aboriginal people in non-reserve settings in 2001 lived in crowded housing comparedto 7 per cent of all Canadians. Over-crowding is an especially severe problem in the Arctic, affecting 53 percent of Inuit in 2001 (O’Donnell and Tait, 2003). In 1995, about 44 per cent of the Aboriginal populationlived in low-income situations (Statistics Canada, 1998). Aboriginal people living in urban settings are alsomore likely to experience poverty; in 2000, the low-income rate among Aboriginal people living in urbancentres was 42 per cent compared to 17 per cent for the general population (Siggner and Costa, 2005).The circulation of Aboriginal people between rural and urban, and between reserve and non-reservecommunities, means that these locations must be considered part of a larger system when considering theepidemiology of health problems, both in terms of identifying the affected population and understandingthe significant stressors, help-seeking, resources, and supports.The Prevalence of Suicide in Aboriginal PopulationsSuicide is a concern internationally, and it is instructive to view Aboriginal suicide in this larger context(Anderson and Jenkins, 2005). Globally, over 800,000 people die by suicide each year, and the global suiciderate in the year 2000 was estimated at 14.5/100,000 (Krug et al., 2002). In many parts of the world, recentdecades have seen an increase in the suicide rate, usually due to an increase among young males. A majorexception is China where young women in rural areas have had a higher rate than men ( Ji, Kleinman, andBecker, 2001; Phillips, Li, and Zhang, 2002).Rates of suicide in Canada as a whole have generally been somewhat higher than in the United States,although in the mid-range in cross-national comparisons (De Leo and Evans, 2004) (see Figure 2-1). From1979 to 2000, the rate of suicide in Canada declined somewhat from 16.7 to 12 per 100,000 (Figure 2-2).In 2001, the overall rate of death by suicide in Canada was estimated at 11.9/100,000, with gender-specificrates of 18.7/100,000 for males and 5.2/100,000 for females (Statistics Canada , 2001; World HealthOrganization, n.d.b).13