https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732320909104 Qualitative Health Research 1–3 © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1049732320909104 journals.sagepub.com/home/qhr Commentary We write in response to the rebuttal of our work, “What can we learn from first-person narratives? The case of non-fatal suicidal behaviour” (Bantjes & Swartz, 2019) by Hjelmeland and Knizek (2019). We are grateful to our interlocutors for raising important questions about our arguments, for pointing out the problems with some of the examples we cite, and for helping us to think carefully about what we do as researchers committed to suicide prevention. There are issues of detail in the critique with which we agree, and others with which we do not. We affirm, as clearly set out in our work, that 1. traditional quantitative approaches (like all research methods) have limitations in terms of what they can tell us about suicide prevention; 2. there is considerable value in qualitative suicide research; 3. it is important to give voice to people with lived experience of suicide; and 4. qualitative suicide research has limitations in terms of what it can promise to tell us about how to prevent suicides (Bantjes & Swartz, 2019). We dispute the claim that we discredit qualitative sui- cide research or the voices of people with lived experience of suicidality (Hjelmeland & Knizek, 2019), as a careful reading of our work will show. Hjelmeland and Knizek (2019) take issue with our selection of examples from their work, and we apologize for any misrepresentation. They do not, however, offer any rebuttal to our core argument, which is that there are distinct limitations to using first- person narratives of suicide to advance the goals of suicide prevention. It is these limitations and the reasons for them that constitute the body of our paper. Academic rigor demands that these limitations be made explicit before any claims are made about how to translate qualitative research into suicide prevention practices. It seems that at the heart of their critique is Hjelmeland and Knizek’s fear that we may undermine the voices of people with lived experience of suicidal- ity and discredit qualitative suicide research generally and their research specifically. We very much regret that our discussion may have contributed to this fear. We believe that attending to the lived experience of people is very important in all qualitative health research, and we have no wish to undermine these voices. We also strongly affirm that we do not in any way want to undermine efforts to advance qualitative 909104QHR XX X 10.1177/1049732320909104Qualitative Health ResearchBantjes and Swartz article-commentary 2020 1 Stellenbosch University, Matieland, South Africa Corresponding Author: Jason Bantjes, Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University, Private Bag X1, Matieland 7602, South Africa. Email: jbantjes@sun.ac.za The Benefits of Robust Debate About the Place of Qualitative Research in Suicide Prevention Jason Bantjes 1 and Leslie Swartz 1 Abstract It is important to give voice to people with lived experience of suicidal behaviour, but as with all narrative data, insider accounts raise methodological and interpretive challenges. A key question is that of how to work with narratives about suicide in a way that affirms both the value and the limitations of the data, so that qualitative evidence may responsibly be used to inform real-world interventions. Scholars who claim that insights gained through qualitative research have consequences for suicide prevention, should be able to provide evidence for this claim. There may be a contradiction between claiming to work within a paradigm that rejects ideas about linear cause-and-effect thinking in suicidology, while simultaneously asserting that insights from qualitative research will have a cause-effect impact on the challenging real-world practice of suicide prevention. Robust methodological debate will strengthen the field of qualitative suicidology. Keywords suicide; methodology; research evaluation; qualitative suicide research; critical suicidology; commentary