Research into the phenomenon of youth suicide is typically guided by quantitative methodologies focused on young people who have attempted or died by suicide. Questions related to epidemiology, etiology, and the development of actuarial measures of risk are often the drivers of these particular kinds of research. Similarly, research into school-based youth suicide prevention curricula is predominantly focused on quantitative measures of the degree to which young people acquire knowledge or change attitudes about suicide, after exposure to a delivered program. Grounded in post-structural ideas, the purpose of this thesis is to expand upon these mainstream inquiries into youth suicide prevention education through close exploration and analysis of how “suicide” is discursively produced within the context of a classroom delivered curriculum. This study will pay particular attention to the discursive productions of suicide in the curriculum, as well as how these productions result in the constitution of particular objects, concepts, and subjectivities. Transcripts of “naturally occurring classroom talk” will serve as the site of analysis. Troubling contemporary “truth regimes” about suicide and its prevention through close analysis of the discursive frames by which they are produced offers up the potential of re-imagining new possibilities for thinking about and delivering youth suicide prevention education.

Research into the phenomenon of youth suicide is typically guided by quantitative methodologies focused on young people who have attempted or died by suicide. Questions related to epidemiology, etiology, and the development of actuarial measures of risk are often the drivers of these particular kinds of research. Similarly, research into school-based youth suicide prevention curricula is predominantly focused on quantitative measures of the degree to which young people acquire knowledge or change attitudes about suicide, after exposure to a delivered program. Grounded in post-structural ideas, the purpose of this thesis is to expand upon these mainstream inquiries into youth suicide prevention education through close exploration and analysis of how “suicide” is discursively produced within the context of a classroom delivered curriculum. This study will pay particular attention to the discursive productions of suicide in the curriculum, as well as how these productions result in the constitution of particular objects, concepts, and subjectivities. Transcripts of “naturally occurring classroom talk” will serve as the site of analysis. Troubling contemporary “truth regimes” about suicide and its prevention through close analysis of the discursive frames by which they are produced offers up the potential of re-imagining new possibilities for thinking about and delivering youth suicide prevention education.