Suicide prevention bill merits support

Re: Apology should set tone for improved First Nations relations (SP, Dec. 21)

Murray Mandryk was right when he described “The scars that many First Nations and Metis children still bear from policies” such as the Sixties Scoop.

Let us be clear. Some of those “scars” are traumas which are passed on from one generation to the next. Intergenerational trauma is part of the basket of elevated risk factors that result in high rates of child and youth suicide in Indigenous communities today. The Saskatchewan First Nations Suicide Prevention Strategy (SFNSPS), released in March 2018, showed that First Nations people have an overall suicide rate 4.3 times that of other residents of the province — and that teenage First Nations girls have a suicide rate just under 30 times that of their non-first Nations peers.

MLA Doyle Vermette has introduced Bill 613, “An Act respecting a Provincial Strategy for Suicide Prevention.” Quebec sharply reduced its suicide rate — and especially its youth suicide rate — within a decade of preparing and energetically implementing a provincial suicide prevention strategy. Thousands of lives have been saved; thousands of families have been spared the agony of losing a loved one to suicide.

Failure by the Sask. Party government to support Bill 613 when it comes to a vote would be a continuation of the systemic racism in mental health services described in the SFNSPS. Failure to address the intergenerational impacts of past government policies would make a mockery of the apology the province has given Sixties Scoop survivors and their families. Jack Hicks, Saskatoon