Nunavut to spend $3.3M to fund suicide and substance abuse prevention programs

The Nunavut government is calling for proposals on suicide prevention initiatives and alcohol and drug prevention funding programs, to address the mental health crisis the territory is facing. 

There's more than $3.3 million available.

Blake Skinner, a mental health specialist with the Department of Health, says the government is open to innovative ideas and approaches. 

Skinner said the department has previously funded after-school programs and projects that address food insecurity.

"The programs that work are programs that are unique to the community and meet the community's needs," he said.

A key pillar in a new Lancet Commision on self-harm is to address social determinants of health when working to reduce self-harm. Social determinants of health are non-medical factors that influence health outcomes. That includes housing, food insecurity, early childhood development, unemployment, and working conditions.

"Suicide is not something that is distributed equally among society but tends to cluster in places of greater social inequality," said Jeffrey Ansloos, a co-author of the publication, psychologist and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous studies of health, suicide and environmental justice.

Addressing fundamental drivers of distress like "food and water security" in addition to "access to health services," are all important factors in preventing suicide, he said. 

"When you think about suicide as something that emerges from a constellation of risk factors, not just one risk factor, our approach has to actually respond to those factors that are driving distress." 

But Ansloos said there is also good news. "In places where there are great threats, are also incredible strengths," he said, such as the "strong grounding" in Inuit identity and culture that benefits from social support.

For parents that includes how to "navigate parenting and life as a family." For children that means "access to quality social and emotional supports, and education and health services." 

"When there are substantive investments in Inuit health, education and housing people are often able to fare better through adversity," he said.

Skinner said the department's self-harm programs have become "more and more Inuit-led, Inuit-directed."

"We've learned that the best way to approach this is never to be prescriptive," he said. "We're not the experts in 25 different communities stretched across three time zones and roughly two million square kilometres. The communities know what they need, and we want them to tell us."