N.W.T. gov't needs to reckon with issues contributing to suicides of young people, says health minister

The N.W.T.'s health minister says the territory needs a "whole-of-government" response to address a spike in suicides this year.

Earlier this week, chief coroner Garth Eggenberger released data on suicides from 2021 and the first nine months of 2022. In that period, 29 people died by suicide — eighteen of them this year.

Deaths by suicide have increased "dramatically" in the Beaufort Delta region, Eggenberger said.

Health Minister Julie Green spoke with Loren McGinnis on The Trailbreaker Wednesday morning to discuss the latest numbers and what the territory is doing to address the situation.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What was your reaction to these numbers that were released of this increased rate of suicide in the territory this year?

I found it devastating to think that we had lost so many young people in so short a time. I sort of was keeping a tally in my head based on what I'd heard, but it was a bigger number than I anticipated. And it's shocking. And I certainly want to take just a moment to express my deepest sympathies to the families and communities who have lost young people to suicide in the last two years, and over years and years before that. It is a devastating loss and it's going to take a lot of healing to put those communities back on their feet.

What's the work being done in Tuktoyaktuk?

I have developed a relationship with [Mayor Erwin Elias] in this role and so when there was the second suicide in September, he called me and we had a conversation about what he thought his community needed at that point. What he wanted was counsellors to go in. So the [Northwest Territories Health and Social Services Authority] Beaufort Delta region is very fortunate to have a [chief operating officer] who's lived there for 30 years and is married to someone from Tuk. She dropped everything and drove to Tuk, talked to the leadership and made a short-term plan to deal with the immediate aftermath of the suicide, and then went back at the end of the week to start working on a longer-term plan.

In the meantime, I was talking to him about the Suicide Prevention Fund application his community was making. He felt that it would be very useful to have an inspirational speaker there, and so they moved very quickly on that and Jordin Tootoo arrived in the community earlier in the week, which was their choice of someone they felt would connect with youth and would provide inspiration to people who are grieving.

One thing Mayor Elias flagged is that the young people he's talking to don't want to talk to someone they don't know, either on the phone or in-person. What are you doing to make sure there are long-term supports in the community?

That's a really difficult problem because we are working from a clinical model. We expect people to have post-secondary education to take up counselling positions, and that often means it's not local people. And one of the things that I know is true is that people would rather speak to their own counsellors, notwithstanding some concerns about confidentiality and being very close in small communities.

That's one of the reasons the department funded the Rhodes Wellness College, Dene Warriors, was so that their local people would get counselling, training — and quite a number of them graduated. We set up a fund for communities to hire them, so we're trying to adapt to a community-based approach.

I just want to mention here that the Inuvialuit Suicide Strategy — which in English is called Moving Forward, Healing Together — really makes a strong point about community-based and local resources to respond to crises of this type. They don't necessarily want someone to parachute in and work with them unless that's somebody they've chosen themselves, like the Tłı̨chǫ did, choosing Poundmaker's for their grief workshops following their tragedies in July.