Every personality is unique. People face influences from numerous factors occurring during their lifetime. In much the same way, every suicide or attempted suicide event is unique, based on the factors that apply in each situation. Understanding suicide warning signs helps friends and family members recognize the risks their loved one faces. The following paragraphs comprise a package of ideas to serve as a suicide awareness guide that you may use to protect your friends and family members. The information might help in recognizing suicide risk.
Suicide risk factors may stem from individual experiences, personal relationship factors, and community risk factors.
Recognizing Suicide Risk
After a suicide attempt, family members or friends often realize that there were warning signs that indicated their loved one might contemplate suicide. But the suicide warning signs went unheeded.
For example, the following life history events in an individual’s background may help others in recognizing suicide risk or suicidal ideas and/or behavior:
- Previous suicide attempts are a good indicator that another suicide attempt will occur without proper treatment
- Substance abuse makes access to suicide methods easier
- Depression – not ordinary sadness but major depression episodes
- Self-harm – it is not a long step from superficial cutting to cutting with fatal effect
- Feelings of hopelessness, which veterans often perceive as physical pain
- Chronic illnesses, with or without chronic pain
- Mental illness where mental illness crisis support is missing
- Financial reverses or loss of employment
- Failing in school when previous education history showed distinct scholastic ability
- Mounting legal problems of any kind
- Criminal behavior leading to guilt or feelings of worthlessness
- Childhood experiences of sexual abuse or other abusive childhood events
- History as a victim of violence
- Impulse control issues, and
- Aggressive behavior that impacts personal relationships, school, or work life.
Personal Relationship Risk Factors
In addition to an individual’s life history, personal relationships often include risk factors leading to suicidal ideas and/or suicide attempts. Such relationship risks include:
- A family history of suicide, or the suicide of other loved ones or close friends
- Relationships that include repetitive bouts of conflict or violence
- Bullying episodes
- Isolation and withdrawal from social contacts, and
- Experiencing the loss of close personal relationships.
Community Risk Factors
Other risk factors stem from the community that encircles an individual. The community risks include:
- Suicide events within the community itself (such as high school friend suicide pacts, veteran suicides)
- Escalation of pervasive physical violence within an individual’s residential or school community
- Acts of discrimination
- Intergenerational trauma that passes down through an entire community from one generation to succeeding generations
- Lack of healthcare access opportunities, and
- Psychological and emotional stress affects people who try to adapt to a new culture while maintaining their original culture.
Finally, understanding suicide warning signs means becoming sympathetic to the way that cultural standards and social conventions permeate society and often negatively impact daily lives. Each of the following emanates from an authoritative platform and may result in a harmful effect. Such risks may include:
- Media influences, such as portrayals of unsafe ideas about suicide, or negative ideas about unacceptable lifestyle choices
- Easy access to methods of suicide, especially for at-risk individuals, and
- Societal stigma about seeking mental health crisis support.
Tips to Prevent Suicides: How to Help Someone Who Exhibits Suicide Warning Signs
The good news is that, just as there are factors that indicate suicidal thoughts/behavior, tips exist that help friends and family members counter suicidal behavior. After identifying at-risk individuals, the ability to help them avoid self-harm situations emerges. Tips to prevent suicides fall into four categories. Those categories encompass individual, relational, community, and societal factors.
- Maintain a strong cultural identity. Cultural identity may refer to a sense of community with others who share the same racial or ethnic background. Or it may mean maintaining a connection with a faith community, such as a church’s prayer circle, Bible study group, or pastoral counseling.
- At-risk individuals should maintain family and friend relationships. Humans are hard-wired to need to feel connected to other humans. That is why support from partners, family members, and friends is critical to maintaining a healthy balance in daily life. Keep the lines of communication open, even if that line seems more like a slender thread. Suicide prevention experts suggest that a person needs a reason to get up in the morning. Related activities may include socializing with members of a faith community. Maintaining ties with family and friends or caring for pets can also help defeat social isolation. The ability of friends/family to impart critical coping and critical thinking skills provides a crucial link to relieve feelings of hopelessness or depression. Learning that others in the family or friend group faced adversity and succeeded by employing critical thinking skills permits an at-risk individual to see hope for the future.
- Communities often provide valuable reinforcements through at-risk individuals’ connectedness to schools, community organizations, and various social institutions. In addition, communities are often the first line of defense when it comes to access to consistent, quality physical and mental healthcare.
- Society writ large can help prevent suicides. It may seem like a simple idea: society can reduce access of at-risk individuals to fatal methods likely to result in suicide. Society also contributes crucial elements of suicide prevention by maintaining the cultural, moral, and religious objections to suicide.
Understanding Suicide Warning Signs Is Everyone’s Responsibility
It is up to everyone in an at-risk individual’s sphere of influence to recognize suicide risk by the obvious signs. If you, your friend, or loved one exhibits the following behavioral symptoms, it is time to get mental health crisis support:
- Talking about feeling trapped, having no way out, nowhere to turn
- Talking about feeling unbearable pain (mental or physical)
- Escalation of bouts of anger, rage
- Increasing anxiety levels
- Researching lethal methods of self-harm
- Showing signs of increased substance abuse
- Saying they feel hopeless
- Saying they feel like a burden or do not want to burden others
- Talking, texting, or posting about wanting to die
- Sleeping too much or too little
- Increasing their Isolation from others in the community or family
- Making plans for suicide
An at-risk individual may try to hide some of their warning signs. Recognize that often these signs are cries for help, for intervention before a serious suicide attempt. The most challenging aspect of helping is maintaining an open communication channel in a non-judgmental manner. The goal is to remain the vehicle that hears the cry for help. You want to hear the plea for help when one comes your way.
Remember: Friends and Family Members Can Help Prevent a Tragedy
Friends and family members have a unique opportunity to help an at-risk friend or relative. Family members are aware of the person’s psychological and medical history. Sometimes, they were present during childhood experiences that may have created the risk factors faced by a relative.
Friends also share a unique relationship; one built on trust. Friends are also part of the current life events that therapists use to put behavior into perspective. Family members and medical professionals may not share this portal from the person’s perspective.
As you can see, family members and friends have a path to follow. They can take what they know of a person’s risk factors and provide that person with guidance where they can. Friends and family can provide the skills needed to cope with challenges and solve problems. Teaching life’s skill sets does not end when childhood ends or when a person reaches age 18. Life is a continual learning process for everyone. Sometimes acknowledging that to an at-risk person can lift the feelings of hopelessness.
Moving Forward
If you, a family member, or a friend exhibits suicide warning signs, contact us immediately to schedule a consultation with one of our therapists. Your therapist will discuss your background with you as well as your personal goals for therapy. Our therapists welcome your questions and want you to become comfortable with our services.
Refinery Counseling Services, LLC, provides a wide variety of mental health services. Our services include individual, family, couples, or group psychotherapy, designed to provide a compassionate, safe space for sharing personal issues. Group therapy sessions consist of a small number of individuals who meet to discuss their experiences under the guidance of a therapist. Your discussion with your therapist will help you decide if group therapy or individual therapy is more appropriate for your goals and needs.
Our therapists tailor all therapy sessions to meet your individual needs and goals. Our sessions cover mental health awareness as well as coping strategies. Our therapists also provide counseling for children and adolescents. Our therapists also have experience in providing counseling for military veterans and individuals with PTSD.
If you are interested in learning more about the process and what to expect from therapy sessions, we invite you to read the March 4 blog article entitled “Therapy 101: What to Expect in Your First Session”. Schedule a session today. We look forward to hearing from you.
