A support and information document titled “After a Suicide” was developed to guide families, friends and communities through the immediate aftermath of loss.
It was clinically sound. Legally careful. Compassionately intended.
But it existed in one dominant language, shaped by only one cultural framework around grief, mental health and help-seeking.
In a country with growing linguistic and cultural diversity, that meant many bereaved families were left navigating shock, stigma and administrative complexity without accessible guidance.
Community leaders reported that the document felt distant. In some groups, suicide itself was rarely spoken about openly. In others, the language of “mental health support” did not map neatly onto cultural norms around family, faith or collective responsibility.
The information was there. But for many, it was not reachable.
The issue was not the translation itself. It was meaning and interpretation.
Certain phrases that felt neutral in the source language carried unintended weight elsewhere. The clinical terminology used risked alienating readers.
Direct references to suicide, essential for clarity, clashed with cultural taboos around naming the act explicitly. Concepts such as counselling, therapy or state support did not hold the same assumptions across all the target communities.
There was also a risk in softening the language too much. Ambiguity could create confusion around legal processes, coronial procedures (official investigations) or safeguarding pathways.
The tension we had to confront:
How do you speak clearly about suicide without violating cultural norms—and without obscuring essential information?
This was not about refining the words. It was about determining who could understand and access the guidance and support—and who was left without it.
We approached the project as a social justice exercise in language.
We treated language as infrastructure—not an add-on.
Before: A single, well-intentioned document that assumed shared cultural norms.
After: Multiple linguistically and culturally adapted versions that allowed bereaved families to access support without navigating additional barriers created by language that did not reflect cultural context.
In moments of trauma, people do not have spare cognitive energy. When organisations assume that one version of clarity fits all, inequity expands. Not through malice, but through omission. Communication, in this context, became a form of social justice.
The work we did reinforced something we see repeatedly: Shared language meaning is often assumed. As are assumptions about shared values, emotions and in this instance about how grief should be expressed.