Suicide among young Inuit in the Canadian Arctic is at an epidemic level. In order to understand the distress and well-being experienced in Inuit communities, a first step in understanding collective suicide, this qualitative study was designed. Fifty Inuit were interviewed in two Inuit communities in Nunavut, Canada, and questionnaires asking the same questions were given to 66 high school and college students. The areas of life investigated here were happiness and wellbeing, unhappiness, healing, and community and personal change. Three themes emerged as central to well-being: the family, talking/communication, and traditional Inuit cultural values and practices. The absence of these factors were most closely associated with unhappiness. Narratives about community and personal change were primarily about family, intergenerational segregation, an increasing population, more trouble in romantic relationships among youth, drug use, and poverty. Change over time was viewed primarily as negative. Discontinuity of kinship structure and function appears to be the most harmful effect of the internal colonialism imposed by the Canadian government in the 1950s and 1960s. Directions toward community control and action are encouraging, and are highlighted. Inuit community action toward suicide prevention and community wellness is part of a larger movement of Indigenous self-determination.

Objective: To determine whether youth in Alberta who had completed suicide were more likely to be younger than their classmates on entering grade 1 (that is, showed a relative age effect).Method: Records were obtainedfor all deaths by suicide by individuals under the age of20years in Alberta during theyears [1979][1980][1981][1982][1983][1984][1985][1986][1987][1988][1989][1990][1991][1992] A similar area of research regarding the relationship of birth dates to performance and ability has not been asinfluential, particularly in the psychiatric literature. This isinteresting because the phenomenon, spoken ofas the "relativeage effect," the "birthday effect," or the "age position effect," has established powerful data that should interest practitioners in various disciplines and professions. This paper brieflysummarizes the fmdings of the "relative age" literature andpresents data indicating that this effect is related to the incidence of completed suicides in young adults.The relative age phenomenon is based on children's birth dates, not relative to the calendar year as with the season-ofbirth literature, but rather as age-advantageous or -disadvantageous positions with regard to other children in a particular age-group. The effect is produced when, for logistical reasons, children are grouped by age for school attendance or other activities where performance is strongly correlated with development. Generally, such age groupings include children

A survey was conducted in which 180 randomly selected male prisoners ages 18 to 44 were interviewed using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule and other questionnaires. A comparison was made with 1,006 similarly aged male residents of Edmonton who were interviewed using the same instruments. Compared to the general population, prisoners were less likely to be married and were less well educated. There was a higher proportion of Native Indians in the prison sample and lower proportions of Oriental and other racial groups. Prisoners were twice as likely to have a lifetime psychiatric disorder compared with the general population, and all individual disorders investigated were more common in the prison population. Six month prevalence showed even greater rates compared with the general population, indicating recent symptoms. The number of individual disorders per prisoner was also higher than for the general population. Lifetime suicide attempts were seven times more frequent in prisoners than in the general population.