Suicide, domestic violence, and the system blind spots we must address

In today’s post, Dr. Jennifer Hester Principal Evaluator at Good Shepherd Australia and New Zealand (GSANZ) reports on developing a Submission to The Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, Parliament of Australia - The relationship between domestic, family and sexual violence victimisation and suicide.

Drawing on practitioner evidence and service system expertise, it emphasises the urgent need for improved data, integrated service responses, and long‑term recovery supports for women, children and young people.

Content note: this post and the submission discuss family, domestic and sexual violence and suicide, which some readers may find distressing.

The relationship between family, domestic and sexual violence (FDSV) and suicide is well established in reports and policy discussions. Yet suicide risk in this context is still too often understood narrowly as an individual mental health crisis rather than the cumulative result of coercive control, trauma, economic abuse and system failure.

Evidence shows that women exposed to intimate partner violence are significantly more likely to experience suicidal thoughts and attempts. A recent Victorian study has also found family violence present in a substantial proportion of women’s suicide deaths. This relationship is not incidental. Violence can produce entrapment, social isolation, housing instability, economic deprivation and trauma-related mental ill-health, all of which heighten suicide risk.

Yet systems do not consistently recognise this.

Today we submitted to the parliamentary inquiry examining the links between FDSV and suicide, arguing that suicide prevention must do more than respond to crisis. It must recognise how violence operates over time, how coercive control erodes hope and autonomy, and how legal, mental health and social service systems can unintentionally intensify the risk they are meant to reduce.

Coercive control and cumulative harm

Coercive control is central to understanding suicide risk in the context of domestic violence. It is not a single incident and rarely has a clear start or end point. Rather, it is a pattern of domination that progressively undermines a person’s confidence, independence and sense of reality.

This cumulative “wearing down” matters. Victim-survivors may come to feel trapped, isolated and unable to imagine a life free from violence. For some, suicidality emerges not from a single crisis but from the gradual erosion of hope.

System responses can compound harm

One of the strongest messages in our submission was that systems often fail to recognise suicidality in the context of violence.

Mental health assessments may not screen for coercive control. Police responses may treat a perpetrator’s suicide threats as a standalone crisis rather than part of an abuse pattern. Courts may fail to recognise litigation abuse. Economic abuse can remain invisible in debt recovery, hardship and means-testing processes. In some cases, victim-survivors’ suicidality is interpreted as evidence of instability rather than a trauma response to sustained abuse.

These blind spots matter because they can reproduce the very dynamics of powerlessness and entrapment that drive harm.

Family law is one example. Practitioners describe court processes as a major source of distress for women and children, particularly where perpetrators use proceedings to continue coercive control after separation. Repeated litigation, forced contact and high legal costs can deepen trauma and hopelessness. When systems privilege procedural neutrality over lived patterns of abuse, they can intensify risk rather than reduce it.

Misidentification is another serious problem. When victim-survivors are misidentified as perpetrators, the consequences can cascade across policing, family law, employment and child protection systems, damaging credibility and sometimes severing relationships with children.

Children are not secondary victims

Children and young people are too often treated as secondary to domestic violence responses, when evidence shows they are victim-survivors in their own right.

Exposure to coercive control and chronic fear is associated with elevated risks of mental ill-health, self-harm and suicidality across the life course. Yet children remain largely invisible in suicide prevention and family violence policy. Services are still primarily funded around adult victim-survivors, with children’s therapeutic supports often short-term, fragmented or unavailable.

This invisibility is especially dangerous where systems enforce contact with an abusive parent despite clear signs of trauma. Practitioner accounts within the submission highlight children expressing suicidality in the context of family law-ordered contact, demonstrating how system decisions can become part of the harm.

Recovery is a suicide prevention issue

Another blind spot is funding. Domestic violence responses remain heavily crisis-driven, with far less investment in healing and recovery. Yet suicide prevention in this context cannot rely on short-term crisis responses alone.

Victim-survivors and children often need sustained therapeutic, legal and practical support. When assistance ends too early, people may be left managing ongoing trauma, legal conflict and economic instability without the resources needed to recover.

Recovery-oriented responses should therefore be understood as core suicide prevention infrastructure.

What must change

If suicide prevention is to be effective in the context of domestic violence, systems must recognise FDSV victimisation as a distinct driver of risk. That means better identification of coercive control, stronger recognition of economic abuse, child-centred responses, improved data linkage and reforms to legal and service systems that currently misread or compound harm.

Most importantly, it requires shifting from an individualised view of suicidality to one that understands how violence, trauma and systems interact over time.

Reducing deaths in this context requires more than better crisis response. It requires systems that see the whole picture and also support recovery.

Authors: Erin Price, General Manager National Family Violence & Recovery Platform, Ecosystem Enablement, and Dr. Jennifer Hester, Principal Evaluator Policy, Advocacy and Service Impact, Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand, Melbourne, Australia.

Content moderator: Good Shepherd Institute.