“I just couldn’t step out of the circle. I was trapped”: Patterns of endurance and distress in Chinese-Canadian women with a history of suicidal behaviour

“I thought that I had to be alive to repay my parents”: Filial piety as a risk and protective factor for suicidal behavior in a qualitative study of Chinese women

“…In a rural North China county, Fei (2005) found through fieldwork that "gambling for qi," the idea of "winning dignity (qi) by behaving in an extreme way without carefully considering the risk" (p. 11), was one of the most popular explanations for suicidal behavior (Fei, 2005). In our qualitative study of Chinese women who immigrated to Canada, the Chinese Confucian value of "ren," "consisting of harmony, self-discipline and endurance" (p. 44), or "putting up with sustained stress through civility and self-restraint" (p. 51), was found to be a primary coping strategy for emotional distress that led to worsening distress and suicidal behavior in our Chinese-Canadian female participants (Zaheer et al, 2016). Cultural understandings of suicide like the above examples can offer a richness and depth to identifying contributors to suicide, and how they complexly interplay with other factors, and thus provide a more accurate picture of how and why suicidal behavior occurs.…”

“…The findings from this article are part of a larger qualitative study that is a cross-national collaboration between the University of Toronto in Toronto and Tsinghua University in Beijing. The study's primary aim was to explore how Chinese-born women living in China and Canada understand and experience suicidal behavior, and how these conceptions and experiences were influenced by cultural and social constructions of gender (Lam et al, 2020;Zaheer et al, 2016). The Research Ethics Boards at Tsinghua University, St. Michael's Hospital, CAMH, and North York General Hospital approved the study.…”

“I Can’t Crack the Code”: What Suicide Notes Teach Us about Experiences with Mental Illness and Mental Health Care

“…A qualitative study involving Chinese Canadian women with a history of suicidal behaviour also highlighted “lack of agency” as a factor in pathways to suicidal behaviour. 32 Hill and Pettit, 33 however, found that autonomy indirectly influenced suicidal ideation via thwarted belonging and perceived burdensomeness, rather than directly impacting suicidal ideation. Our findings confirm that autonomy is significant in suicide pathways, although the exact mechanism of impact requires further exploration.…”

“I think I am worth it. I can give up committing suicide”: Pathways to recovery for Chinese-Canadian women with a history of suicidal behaviour

“…The current paper emerged from analysis of the data collected for a study (Zaheer et al., 2016) designed to examine the experiences, stressors, and beliefs of a sample of Chinese-born women living in Canada with a history of suicidal behaviour. In most countries in the world, including Canada, women die by suicide at much lower rates than men do (Canetto & Sakinofsky, 1998).…”

“…In this study, we interviewed 10 Chinese-Canadian women about their experiences of suicidal behaviour (Zaheer et al., 2016). The respondents described restricted patterns of emotional communication, feelings of lack of agency, experiences of victimization and oppression, and stress related to traditional gender expectations and those related to social change.…”