Why the DFSV–Suicide Inquiry Must Widen Its Lens: Submission to the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs
By Stan Korosi, PhD
Dialogue in Growth | Policy and social analysis
Australia’s new parliamentary Inquiry into the relationship between domestic, family and sexual violence (DFSV) victimisation and suicide is important, timely, and necessary. But if the Inquiry remains conceptually narrow, it risks missing a significant and preventable subset of suicide deaths.
My submission (https://doi.org/10.25907/01015) to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs argues that current policy settings are not yet sufficiently specified to explain — or prevent — a substantial subset of suicides associated with family relationship rupture during separation and divorce. The dominant DFSV victim–perpetrator framing captures important harms. It should be retained. But on its own, it may not be enough.
The central problem is this: some suicides appear to occur at the intersection of family rupture, coercive relational dynamics, social narratives, and institutional interpretation. If policy only sees one part of that intersection, it will underperform in the real world.
The suicide prevalence signal policy should not ignore
A major blind spot in public discussion is the psychosocial suicide category ICD-10 Z63.5: “Disruptions to family relationships by separation or divorce.” In the submission, I highlight Australian 2022 data showing this category recorded in a substantial number of suicide deaths for both men and women, with markedly higher male mortality. This is not a fringe issue. It is a population-level signal that our current approach to DFSV and suicide is missing a significant at-risk group.
This matters because such coding does not tell us whether cases involved victimisation, perpetration, bidirectional conflict, coercive dynamics, parental alienation, institutional misreading, or some combination of these. It identifies a high-risk psychosocial presentation. What it does not do is explain the pathway.
That is the policy gap.
Why conventional framing of suicide can be incomplete
Much of suicidology and DFSV policy examines trauma, violence, coercive control, and social determinants. However, broad frameworks can become too generic when they are applied to severe family rupture during separation and divorce.
The issue is not whether existing frameworks are “wrong.” The issue is whether they are sufficiently granular.
Where policy is too broad, high-risk presentations become flattened into generic categories such as “relationship problems,” or interpreted through pre-existing templates that may not fit the facts of a specific case. In practice, this can obscure coercive relational dynamics, identity degradation, and institutional responses that intensify suicidality.
That is especially relevant where the parent–child relationship itself becomes the site of coercive conflict.
Parental alienating behaviours as one possible coercive pathway
The submission argues that parental alienating behaviours (PABs) should be examined as one possible (but not the only) under-recognised coercive pathway within family relationship rupture. This argument includes all forms of DFSV that meet evidentiary standards and are gender-inclusive.
It is an argument for empirical investigation of this hidden suicide presentation.
If coercive parenting and relational behaviours are contributing to suicidality in some separation/divorce contexts, then policy must be capable of identifying that pathway and responding to it. If not, an entire high-risk presentation can sit in plain sight in national data while remaining poorly specified in a prevention strategy.
In my submission, I frame PABs as coercive communicative practices that can restructure family relationships and identity — including, in some cases, inducing child rejection of a parent without reasonable justification. The policy question for the Inquiry is whether such dynamics are currently under-recognised in suicide prevention settings.
The missing suicide mechanism: identity degradation and institutional uptake
One of the most important gaps in the current debate is the role of social and institutional meaning-making.
Suicide risk is not always reducible to individual pathology or immediate interpersonal conflict. In some cases, suicidality may be intensified by a cumulative process in which:
- Parental identity is degraded;
- Claims are filtered through delegitimising templates;
- Gendered scripts shape credibility;
- Institutions stabilise these interpretations; and
- Alternate non-stigmatised identities become harder to sustain.
That is a sociological and policy problem, not merely a clinical one.
The submission proposes a pathway model in which coercive relational dynamics, including but not limited to parental alienation, gendered social scripts, and institutional uptake, can combine to create entrapment, burdensomeness, defeat, and loss of belongingness — all well-known suicide-relevant constructs in the literature. The point is not to presume causation in every case, but to specify a mechanism that can be tested, rather than ignored.
This is not a zero-sum argument about gender
A recurring mistake in policy discourse is to treat recognition of one form of harm as denial of another. That is intellectually lazy and policy-destructive.
My submission explicitly argues for a gender-inclusive approach. Men are overrepresented in suicide mortality in this presentation, which warrants focused attention. But women are also significantly affected and may experience different forms of identity foreclosure and institutional misrecognition.
The relevant policy question is not “Which gender counts?” The question is: Which coercive pathways are operating, how are they institutionally interpreted, and what interventions reduce deaths?
That is the standard that a serious inquiry should apply.
Where the current National Suicide Prevention Strategy appears under-specified
The submission uses Australia’s National Suicide Prevention Strategy 2025–2035 as an example of a broader structural issue: a high-risk psychosocial presentation is recognised, but pathway-specific responses remain underdeveloped.
The Strategy addresses DFSV as a major public policy concern and recognises family relationship disruption as a suicide factor. However, in my assessment, it does not yet provide a sufficiently targeted response for suicidality associated with severe family relationship rupture during separation and divorce — particularly where coercive relational or parenting dynamics may be involved.
In practical terms, this can lead to:
- risk recognition without pathway-specific intervention design,
- generic service responses where specialist responses may be needed,
- insufficient service mapping/commissioning for this presentation, and
- limited evidence-building on causal pathways and intervention effectiveness.
If we want outcomes to improve, strategy language must connect to operational design.
What a serious policy response should look like
The answer is not ideology. The answer is better specification, better evidence, and better implementation.
My submission recommends a targeted policy package to complement — not displace — existing DFSV work. Key elements include:
- an independent evidence review on suicide associated with family relationship disruption (including coercive relational and parenting dynamics and parental alienation as testable pathways);
- improved data linkage and case-review capability;
- gender-inclusive risk identification at family law, mediation, counselling and related touchpoints;
- targeted interventions for high-conflict/coercive presentations (beyond generic counselling-only responses);
- specialist service mapping, commissioning and evaluation;
- evidentiary safeguards to assess claims and counterclaims, especially of DFSV and parental alienation without presumption; and
- practitioner training that is gender-inclusive, evidence-disciplined, and capable of working under evidentiary uncertainty.
In plain terms: if a risk pattern is visible in national data, but invisible in service design, policy is not finished.
The Inquiry has an opportunity — and a responsibility
This Inquiry can do more than restate known harms. It can improve the evidence base by testing under-recognised pathways and sharpening suicide prevention design where family relationship rupture is the presenting context.
That requires conceptual courage and evidentiary discipline at the same time.
Australia does not need a false choice between DFSV prevention and a more complete account of suicidality in family rupture contexts. It needs a framework capable of handling complexity without collapsing into ideology, and a prevention strategy capable of matching the real-world patterns visible in the data.
Lives depend on whether policy can do that work.
Selected references (as cited in the underlying submission)
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2022). Psychosocial Risk Factors and Deaths by Suicide.
- National Mental Health Commission. (2025). National Suicide Prevention Strategy 2025–2035.
- Harman, J. J., Kruk, E., & Hines, D. A. (2018). Parental alienating behaviours: An unacknowledged form of family violence. Psychological Bulletin, 144(12), 1275–1299. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000175
- Cleary, A. (2019). The Gendered Landscape of Suicide: Masculinities, Emotions, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16634-2
- Van Orden, K. A., Witte, T. K., Cukrowicz, K. C., Braithwaite, S. R., Selby, E. A., & Joiner, T. E. Jr. (2010). The interpersonal theory of suicide. Psychological Review, 117(2), 575.
- Poustie, C., Matthewson, M., & Balmer, S. (2018). The Forgotten Parent: The Targeted Parent Perspective of Parental Alienation. Journal of Family Issues, 39(12), 3298–3323. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X18777867
- Lee-Maturana, S., Matthewson, M. L., & Dwan, C. (2020). Targeted parents surviving parental alienation: Consequences of the alienation and coping strategies. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29, 2268–2280. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01725-1
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