The cruel optimism of suicide prevention: Thinking beyond the mental health model

Suicide has long been constructed as an individual, pathological problem of the mind, requiring a combination of clinical care and interpersonal support to prevent it. The endurance of this individualising and pathologising approach serves to reflect and maintain the marginalisation of sociology in suicide studies. This article contributes to redressing this balance, via analysis of creative, qualitative workshops which formed part of a broader study exploring the politics of suicide. Informed by 33 participants’ contributions from six creative-response workshop groups, in dialogue with Lauren Berlant’s concept of ‘cruel optimism’, we propose a creative sociological (re)turn in suicide studies. Our analysis explores how the politics of UK suicide prevention constitutes a form of ‘cruel optimism’, obfuscating structural and sociological approaches to preventing suicide, and giving primacy to individual mental health-led interventions. We argue this provides a vital opportunity and urgent call for sociology to contribute more robustly to suicide research.