Suicide Risk Factors

 One way of helping to prevent suicide is to educate yourself and others about the risk factors and warning signs of suicide. I will address the risk factors in this blog, and I will cover the warning signs in my next blog.

Suicide is a very complex issue, and there is no one thing that causes someone to take his life. Most suicides result from a sort of “perfect storm” of risk factors and circumstances that build on each other until the person can see no other way out than to kill himself.

There are three types of risk factors related to suicide: health-related factors, environmental factors, and historical factors.

One of the biggest health-related factors is mental illness, especially if it is untreated. The illnesses with the highest risk for suicide are depression, substance use disorders, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. Chronic, painful illnesses can also increase the risk of suicide.

Environmental factors include access to lethal means (guns, prescription drugs, household chemicals, etc.); prolonged stress at work, home, or school; and exposure to another suicide in the family, at school, in the community, or in the news.

The biggest historical risk factor, as I said in my last blog, is a previous suicide attempt. Other historical risk factors include a family member’s suicide and a history of abuse, trauma, or neglect in childhood.

To prevent suicide, we must learn to identify and help mitigate these risk factors in a person’s life. There are many things we can do to help reduce the risk from these factors. These are called protective factors. To reduce the risk of suicide, we must work to reduce the risk factors and increase the protective factors.

For one, we can take the steps outlined in my earlier blogs to reduce the stigma of mental illness and to provide better access for mental health care. Also, the support of loved ones is critical when someone is feeling overwhelmed. People who are experiencing a crisis need to know that they’re not alone and that someone cares about them.

We can help others deal with stress by helping them to develop coping and problem-solving skills. It’s also important to limit access to lethal means, for someone who seems to be at high risk for suicide, by locking up things like guns, drugs, and chemicals.

Finally, we can help reduce the effects of historical factors by encouraging people to seek counseling for their trauma or abuse.

To learn more about risk factors, protective factors, and warning signs, see this page on the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s website: https://afsp.org/risk-factors-protective-factors-and-warning-signs