Bio (from annasmueller.com)
Mueller’s research agenda examines how social relationships and social contexts shape adolescent health and wellbeing over the transition to adulthood, with a focus on understanding adolescent suicide and suicide clusters. She is a leading expert on youth suicide and suicide prevention in schools and is passionate about helping communities heal after suicide losses.
A sought-after public speaker, she regularly speaks with school districts and communities about strategies to improve their suicide prevention and postvention efforts. Her first book – Life under Pressure: The Social Roots of Youth Suicide and What to Do About Them – was published in 2024. Written for a broad audience, the book helps guide families, schools, communities, and even teens themselves in building worlds youth feel are worth living in.
Mueller’s research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the Western Colorado Community Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. Her research has received multiple awards for its contribution to knowledge, including from the American Sociological Association, the American Pediatrics Association, the Society for Science & the Public, and the American Association of Suicidology.
Her research can be read in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Sociological Theory, Social Science & Medicine, and the American Journal of Public Health, among others. She teaches courses on sociology of health, medicine, mental health, education, children/youth, culture, gender, research methodology, and social statistics.
When she’s not at work, Mueller enjoys being outside, particularly hiking, gardening, or entertaining her cats, and she’s always in the middle of a good novel.
Transcript
Anna Mueller: I'm super happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Jonathan Singer: So, what led you to want to explore suicide in Poplar Grove?
Anna Mueller: Oh, that's a great question. So, you know, I started getting interested in the social contagion of suicide or what people often refer to as the social contagion of suicide. And I was really unsatisfied with what we understood about what on earth social contagion is and more importantly, how do we stop it? And so I had this rare opportunity to work with a community that was experiencing recurring suicide clusters and despite their best efforts, they had really not been able to turn the tide on that. And so um I I guess I said yes and I showed up and uh you know three years later um we had kind of wrapped up data collection and then you know proceeded to write up the findings. and whatnot.
Jonathan Singer: So when you say social contagion, when you say contagion, how were people thinking about it? And then how have you come to think about it?
Anna Mueller: Oh yeah. So I think that actually for a long time in suicide prevention research, we actually really thought that social contagion was primarily driven by um by pre-existing risk factors and for kids becoming friends or you know sharing being exposed to suicide And then the effect that we were calling social contagion was really just like kids sharing risk factors and then both attempting suicide. So we're in in other words, we were sort of like poo pooing it, right? We were sort of saying like this is not a real thing. Well, I think that anybody who has actually sat and talked to a kid who is a suicide loss survivor who's lost someone they care about to suicide, you'll know that this is a really profound experience that really changes their lives in in really complicated ways. And um and in fact after spending years talking to youth who have had this experience in Poplar Grove and beyond um you know we we came to understand that actually being exposed to suicide attempts or deaths in this way can really change whether kids imagine suicide as an acceptable applicable option that they themselves might use to escape psychological pain. So it's not that there aren't pre-existing risk factors because nobody dies by suicide without experiencing really intense psychological pain or attempt suicide, right? But there is something about how we imagine suicide and whether it's something we ourselves could imagine doing and our the external social world and our experiences in it can really shape that part of kids imagination.
Jonathan Singer: That seems like a really important maybe distinction or nuance around this idea of contagion. One being more like a medical thing, like here's like I'm going to I have this this this thing in me and I'm going to spread it to you. And the other one is really about um the idea of suicide as something that kids can either see as being part of their story or not, which is it is very different than the original conception.
Anna Mueller: Yeah. Although it's also not a new idea, right? Like lots of uh older suicidologists like Schneiderman and and um oh like Douglas like other people have had this idea that the idea of what suicide is and what it means to people matters, right? So um and I love I actually really love acknowledging that because it invites us to come up with other interventions and ways to actually support kids. It it sort of directs us to think through well how do we equip kids with other options? Um and really importantly how do we equip kids to seek help um for the things that they're they're struggling with in their lives rather than feeling like suicide is their only option.
Jonathan Singer: So when you talk about equipping kids with um sort of coping mechanisms, I mean you didn't use that word, but um I I think about that as really being individual, right? And so you have social workers that are out there working with an individual kids like, okay, here's this coping skill or here's this communication skill or here's this. It's really at the individual level. But your book is about the social roots.
Anna Mueller: Yeah.
Jonathan Singer: Of youth suicide. So, can you can you bridge that gap for us?
Anna Mueller: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. So, you know, one of the things that um that I as a sociologist have often struggled with when I'm reading the the literature on suicide prevention or why people die by suicide is that it is so individually focused. But sometimes for the kids that are struggling with suicidal thoughts, that can feel really like actually like subtractive and like, you know, I've had so many kids kind of say to me like, can you change the world please and make it not so torturous? So, what we did in our book, and I think one of our our big contributions and something I've kind of devoted my career to to hoping to articulate for clinicians and schools and communities and families, is that we also need to think about how the social environments are either feeding kids well-being or potentially harming them. And sometimes, maybe not in a clinical interaction, with a kid. Um although I think it can still play a role in shaping how we talk to them and I think that good good clinicians know that. Um but I think we also need to invite ourselves to begin thinking about how can we intervene with families? How can we intervene in schools to address some of these factors that um you know that that can really undermine kids well-being. And so it's not just on the kid to change their cognition or change their cognitive processes about how they're they're struggling. And I I find that kids actually really really feel honored by that approach when you're like, "This is not your fault. Some of this is on the external world that you have no control over." And of course, the clinician has to like work with the kid on what they do control, which sometimes is rumination and those thought processes and and whatnot. But um but what I do is I try to work with with schools especially. I'm a school focused person, but schools and communities, I try to work with them to think about how they can address some of the social roots that if if we don't and also if we don't address them, your uh even your evidence-based suicide prevention interventions are are really going to fail. That's one of the things that we really show in our book.
Jonathan Singer: And so are there specific roots like are there specifics that you can talk about that you found that you would say these are sort of the social roots of youth suicide?
Anna Mueller: So I'm not sure that at this moment in time we're ready to declare these are the comprehensive list of like social roots, but um so So this is also perhaps an invitation to other scholars to also join and work in their communities and add to this. But what I can do is so we wrote our book life under pressure the social roots of youth suicide and what to do about them with my colleague Seth Averton. Um we wrote that book about a particular place that I mentioned Poplar Grove that has had this painful history with suicide. And so what we did in that community was we did identify what I would call three core social roots. The first was that um the kids were under pretty intense academic pressure. Um, and not just academic pressure, but to be a very, very particular kind of kid. The community had really narrow beliefs about what a quote unquote good kid or a quote unquote good family looked like. And it was uh it was really narrow. I mean, I felt tired just listening to what the kids were trying to accomplish during their adolescent years. And it was like taking excellent classes, being really ready to go to an excellent ent college like preferably on a merit scholarship or an athletic scholarship. I mean, I was like sweating bullets for these kids. Um, so that was the first social route was these really narrow expectations make it really hard. It it makes it easier for more kids to feel like they don't fit in and we all know that's a painful experience. So, that's the first social route. The second social route is probably fairly easy to anticipate and is more broadly shared in communities across the United States and that is mental health stigma
Anna Mueller: and had a particular sort of variation in Poplar Grove that's important to recognize. All mental health stigma doesn't look the same in communities. In Poplar Grove, kids were supposed to make it look easy to be taking 15 a not 15, but a lot of AP classes. You know, they were supposed to make it look easy to be a straight A kid. And so any sign of anxiety or stress or suffering under those intense expectations was at odds with being that good kid. they were supposed to be. So basically those local that local culture in this community intensified the mental health stigma. It made it easier to fall outside what was acceptable. And then I'll get to the consequences in a second, but the third social route was actually a surprise and that was social connectedness. And you know we generally think about social connectedness as a really good thing and it often is, right? But in this community it was a very small community and it was highly interconnected. And what that meant was that privacy was a really scarce resource. And so everybody was really concerned about what other people thought of them. And really private personal and sometimes painful information could easily slip into the public domain. And people knew that and they saw it happen to other families. And then they saw the gossip and they saw the people talking about, you know, how parents were bad parents for letting their kid do X, Y, or Z or or only had parents like have kids who die by suicide. And so that just really increased the stakes of anybody finding out that your child or you yourself was having a mental health problem. So those were the three social roots. The consequences for kids are pretty easy to anticipate. We found that these social roots cause pretty intense psychological pain and suffering for kids. And then really importantly, they did not want to get help. And their families also sometimes struggled with the feeling that it was okay to get their kid help because again the families would experience the same pressure that the kids would experience.
Jonathan Singer: And I appreciate you sort of pointing to the kind of Poplar Grove specific but not unique issue of pressure. Um because we know there are school districts where that pressure to excel academically isn't there. Um uh which is different than parents in a district not valuing education. We know that that's a very different thing than sort of academic pressure. Um but the idea of um of being in a small community and having that social connectedness be problematic I think probably speaks to a lot of people especially in rural areas. Um people who are in um uh maybe sort of like religious minority
Jonathan Singer: settings um or uh sort of even ethnic minority settings in the United States where there is either a an expectation that you will use local sort of in inroup services um or that you don't share what's going on with outsiders and and I think that's a huge issue because it it brings up for social workers and other providers like you want to respect sort of community norms, right? And and sort of local ways of knowing and and and healing. And those can be problematic when someone's like, I don't want to go to the locals.
Anna Mueller: Yeah.
Jonathan Singer: Like I want to get out of here and talk to somebody who has no idea who I am.
Anna Mueller: Yeah. And in fact, that was part of why Poplar Grovians trusted us is because we were outsiders. So we were safer to talk to because we weren't a member of their community. Um you know what's interesting though is for sociologists in some ways it's it's actually not surprising that social connectedness has this um potential dark side. And all of the things that you just mentioned are things that are act well established in over 50 years of like social network uh research within sociology. And so we were sort of the first ones to kind of just really bring it very explicitly to understanding suicide where the research on understanding suicide has almost uniformly posited social connectedness as a as a good thing. And so it's important to realize that there there's there there are some potential downsides that we have to navigate carefully. Well, and I think that that's it. I think it's a really good thing to note that there are some disciplines that are like, well, yes, this is not always a good thing. Um, and even, you know, when I look at lists of risk and protective factors that are kind of generically posted, even on like federal websites, they'll oftentimes put religion as a protective factor. And we've known for a long time that religion can be helpful, but it can be harmful, right? So having that and and having the data which you all collected I think is really important to being able to kind of unpack how and when and why. I mean not particularly with with religion but social connectedness. I think that's great.
Anna Mueller: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I totally agree and and you know I've done work in another community where um a lot of people found that their faith community really helped them. This was another community very different in demographics than Poplar Grove. Um much higher poverty, much higher parental incarceration rates and things like that. But One of the interesting things we heard about was for some people their faith in God or their faith community was really protective and a wonderful source of strength, but other people um there was just systematic conversations about what people called religious trauma and how actually the source of their psychological trauma was their faith community. And so we we do need to just be aware that um that nothing is just perfectly good and nothing is perfectly bad, right? And you know we just have to be careful. I think this is also one of the important um things to have interdisciplinary conversations and to be producing knowledge about really important painful social problems like suicide and especially youth suicide. Making sure that we have multiple disciplines contributing to that knowledge.
Jonathan Singer: And and speaking of multiple disciplines, you're a sociologist and this is a social work podcast. Um what were some things that you saw social workers in schools do or how were social workers in in in in Popppler Grove or any of the other schools that you've worked at that that you saw that they were doing things that were working well that were helpful.
Anna Mueller: Well, you know, one of my um one of the schools that I worked in after Poplar Grove um uh had uh the principal had made the decision to hire two social workers um who did both have clinical training um and clinical licenses and their only job was to support students. who were really having a very difficult time. They had no standing case load. They weren't tasked with serving 504s or IEPs. They were I mean they probably helped with that too, but literally they were just there to support students who were really going through it in their families or their personal lives. And they made such a difference to this school community. Um and kids would just actually one of the most beautiful things they were both wonderful people like um kind of those magical unicorns who just just by their beautiful presence like just change the whole entire dynamic. So, I want to acknowledge that there just are some magical people that also show up and and care so much about our students. But, um the thing that was so special about them in particular and the way that their school used them and their open door policy that kids could just walk in when they needed to is in that school we saw more kids reaching out for help without um uh just voluntary fairly they were the ones who literally went to these school staff members when they were feeling suicidal and said can you help me and like that is just the gold standard for suicide prevention when our kids feel safe asking us for help and so I do think that's one of the beautiful one of the ways that school uh social workers can be used we just need our administrators and principles to you know to to decide that that's a a good investment of you know a full-time staff member and I do realize with school funding as it is, that that can be a bigger ask than I make it seem.
Jonathan Singer: Well, and I think that the the idea of having somebody who is available and that students know and trust and and and that don't have to go through a bunch of hoops to get to or that the only way you can get to this person is if you've been identified at risk by some adult or some mechanism. Right? There is there is, um, there's a directness to that. That seems really powerful and and it's cool that you saw that it kind of changed the dynamic of the school.
Anna Mueller: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with everything you just said and also those individuals were involved with clubs in the school. So like one of them was I think the lead of the gender and sexuality alliance for like a you know a while and things like that. So the kids could get to know them through other mechanisms not just through needing you know mental health help. They were members of the school community and that's just so important for us to always be thinking about how we can break down barriers. I know that when I was in high school, I was terrified of my principal. Literally terrified. Probably says something about me. I was a good kid. I don't know why I was scared. I wasn't really breaking rules that I could get caught for. But um but I just still, you know, people with authority over us can be really scary. So, we just have to be really thoughtful in our school environments about how we're making it safe for kids to get to know staff that can possibly be their trusted adults or their their person that they turn to for help.
Jonathan Singer: So So based on what you found in Poplar Grove, um what steps can communities take to address these social roots and create environments where young people feel supported and and there's less vulnerability to suicide or there's there's there's more uh resilience.
Anna Mueller: Well, you know, I think I mean, you know, we can start with the basics, which is having a really comprehensive evidence-based suicide prevention, you know, set of protocols and policies and just making sure that you have somebody preferably at the district level just for efficiency who's making sure that that best practices are being followed. Um, I will say that uh one thing that I always do when I'm working with a school is I check out their safety plan form just as a way for me to um get very quickly in touch with whether they are just safety planning um for CYA or um or just whether the the evidence-based portions of a safety plan have fallen away as it got translated into the school context. I find that quite often. Um and so making sure that we are really sticking close to what we know works for kids in schools is really important. A parallel, you know, thing to that is of course having a a well thoughtout uh suicide post vvention plan before it's ever needed because those are really stressful days and um um if you're not ready for them before they happen, um mistakes are going to be made. They're they're difficult days and mistakes may be made even with the best p plan in place because I think you it's just there's such complicated days as I know you well know. Um but that's still important to put as much thought into it. Um especially around issues of memorialization because it's very important that we treat all student deaths equally. Um it's not okay to stigmatize or treat a student who has passed away and and and so doing left the school community differently just because it was a suicide loss. Even though we also have concerns about certain forms of memorialization when it was a suicide loss because we want to be very careful to not glorify suicide as an idea or as a way to to gain an immense amount of attention and affection from a community. Um you know these things it's so hard right because I also want to surround loss survivors in as much affection and attention and support as they can encompass. So, I've already stumbled right into one of the things that makes postvention so complicated. But what I really try to guide school communities to do is just make sure that they have a plan for memorializing students that they're comfortable with regardless of how the student died um before any students have passed away ideally. And of course, knock on wood none no students ever pass away because this is we're talking about a terrible topic. But so, you know, those are, you know, If I could have one more thing, it would be making sure that people are trained in really high quality evidence-based trainings. Um, sometimes our school leaders don't realize that um even if you are trained, we need to reup every three years. Um, and that that we don't always get the best graduate education in suicide prevention, even when there someone is a clinician or a social worker or a school counselor, etc., etc. So, those are kind of three like if we're going to start somewhere, let's start there.
Jonathan Singer: That's great. And and I love that you're looking at safety planning. Like Van Halen when they were on tour, they asked for bowls of M&M's and they had all the green ones taken out. And it's not that they didn't like green M&M's, but they knew that if if that wasn't taken out, then people hadn't read through their entire their entire writer. Um which meant that there were probably mistakes made with the construction of the stage and all these sorts of things like so so you have that there.
Anna Mueller: Yeah, exactly. That's my little trick.
Jonathan Singer: Exactly. Um uh so um earlier you mentioned that you want people to come together, right, to advance the science and things like this. What are what are some things that social workers and most social workers are out in the, you know, field doing the work and they're not, you know, in colleges or universities doing research. um uh what could sort of everyday frontline mental health folks like social workers do to participate or to contribute to the science?
Anna Mueller: Oh, I mean, you know, well, so I'm a I'm a community engaged researcher. So, like honestly, some of my key um in you know, informants have actually been social workers who work in schools. So, I actually often partner with them in the design of the study and they serve on my advisory boards um to direct my research. I realize that you know not every um social worker is going to find that opportunity out there but I think their voices really matter and even just you know doing things like participating in podcasts I mean just continuing to educate oneself about the latest science is and then to the extent that you can and it's safe to do so or welcome to do so sharing that with the administrators um in their school or district because um you know often times our social workers, our counselors and and psychologists, our school psychologists are like they are the experts in the building and I hate when they're tasked with lifting this up on their own. Um and that's something I advocate that the whole school community needs to be involved, but for those um magical unicorns who are working in schools and have the capacity to do that, I it can just make such an incredible difference to the kids and other staff members. in the school buildings because staff also benefit from having evidence-based protocols and trainings and and so on and so forth.
Jonathan Singer: That's great. Well, Anna, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us and and share a little bit about um your study on Poplar Grove and I highly recommend everybody pick up a copy of your book and um which the link will be on the website. So, thank you so much for being here.
Anna Mueller: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to to talk with your audience.
APA (7th ed) citation for this podcast:
Singer, J. B. (Producer). (2024, December 30). #142 - Social Roots of Youth Suicide: Interview with Anna Mueller, PhD [Audio Podcast]. Social Work Podcast. Retrieved from http://www.socialworkpodcast.com/2024/12/mueller.html
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