“The Walls Were Closing in, and We Were Trapped”

Semistructured interviews focusing on suicide were conducted with 80 street youth in agencies and on the streets of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Participants described their understandings of the phenomenon of suicide among street youth and the meanings suicide held for them. Qualitative analysis of the interviews revealed themes of worthlessness, loneliness, hopelessness, and most centrally the feeling of being “trapped” as forming the construct of suicide held by the participants. These idioms of distress were situated within the context of a street life that included social stigma and drug abuse.