Liberatory Responses to Suicide and Crisis

In this session, we will discuss the history of carceral responses to suicide and crisis. Beginning with the conflation of madness and queerness, we will explore the ways queer and trans people have been targeted by carceral psychiatric and psychological “interventions.” We will trace the persistence of this historical trauma’s legacy in current crisis response models. After grounding in historical and contemporary responses to crisis and suicide, we will imagine liberatory frameworks for responding to suicide and crisis that resist paradigms of punishment and pathology.

Presenter: Jess Stohlmann-Rainey

I am Jess (she/her) and I love to talk about suicide. I am a mad, queer, feminist, care worker. I am a trainer and consultant, and work as Director of Peer Services at Rocky Mountain Crisis Partners (who provides the statewide crisis and peer lines, RAINN hotline, Colorado Lifeline, and others), and an instructor at the University of Denver’s School of Professional Psychology. I live as a white settler on the unceded territory of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute), and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) people, (so-called Denver, CO). In my work, I aspire to be a useful person and create pathways to intersectional, justice-based, emotional support for marginalized communities. I believe mutual aid, disability justice, abolitionist, and other liberation ideologies are integral to solve the problems that lead to suicide. Right now, I am really into talking/thinking about epistemology, capitalism, and ethics in the context of suicidology.