A comprehensive approach to suicide prevention includes a full continuum of services: teaching coping and problem-solving skills, providing immediate crisis support, reducing access to lethal means and fostering supportive community connections.
If a friend begins skipping classes, getting poor grades, forgetting or performing chores poorly or talking in ways that indicate stress and depression, don’t ignore these warning signs.
Identifying People at Risk
People at risk for suicide often display a change in their behavior, including the abandonment of family and friends, reckless driving, drug or alcohol abuse and even attempts to hurt themselves. They may say goodbye to family and friends or leave a note with the intention of committing suicide. Other warning signs are if they have access to weapons or lethal means, like pills, and if they’ve made a plan for suicide.
Identifying at-risk people is an essential first step in preventing suicide. This includes teaching about the warning signs and connecting those at risk to care and support. This can be done through gatekeeper training and implementing suicide screening and referral programs in settings like schools and primary care offices. Educating the public about suicide and providing resources through social media can also be important. Long-term prevention strategies include community support, economic empowerment and psychological resilience programs. Also, systems-level strategies such as means restriction and crisis response planning can help reduce suicides.
Developing Life Skills
Life skills are the abilities that allow us to cope with and navigate life’s challenges. Examples include critical and creative thinking (the ability to examine complex issues and find unique solutions), self-awareness, empathy, and resilience.
These life skills are essential to preventing suicide and the long-lasting effects it has on those who have attempted or died from it. A comprehensive community-based approach can identify those at risk and prevent the many factors that may contribute to suicide: mental health conditions; relationships, including bullying or relationship breakups; financial or housing instability; substance use; access to lethal means; historical trauma; legal problems; and discrimination. Effective prevention efforts must involve multi-sectoral partnerships that work together to select and implement evidence-informed upstream policies, programs, and practices related to economic stability, healthy connections, coping skills, and access to downstream treatment and crisis support. This can help reduce the stigma associated with seeking assistance for mental illness and suicide, which can lead to people not seeking or completing care.
Developing Resilience
Resilience refers to a person’s ability to adapt to change and stress. It is a learned trait and capacity that can be improved by practice. Resilient people have an optimistic outlook and believe in their abilities to overcome challenges. They have healthy coping mechanisms such as positive self-talk, focusing on the good things in life, gratitude, exercising, and goal setting. They also tend to see setbacks as opportunities for growth and learning.
Everyone experiences challenges in their lives, from small inconveniences to catastrophic occurrences such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Developing resilience is critical to handling these challenges and helping prevent suicide.
Increasing resilience can be done through long-term, preventative measures, such as screening for suicide risk factors, encouraging community engagement, and promoting social programs that encourage connectedness. Additionally, a person can build resilience through healthy lifestyle choices like getting enough sleep and exercise and by cultivating supportive relationships.
Providing Support
When someone is at risk for suicide, it’s important to offer them support. This can be done by being there for them — physically or by phone. It also means making sure they are safe by removing objects that could be used in a suicide attempt and staying with them until they can get help.
Research has shown that increasing someone’s sense of connection to others can be a protective factor against suicide. Thomas Joiner’s Interpersonal-Psychological Theory of Suicide explains this in part by highlighting the relationship between low connectedness and feelings of hopelessness and psychological pain.
People can help prevent suicide in their communities, states, tribes, and territories by promoting and implementing strategies that have been proven to work at the community level. These include reducing access to lethal means of suicide, encouraging safe media portrayals of suicide and providing mental health education. Providing support to those who have attempted suicide or experienced loss by suicide is also critical. This is known as postvention, and can be accomplished by offering a range of services that provide support for individuals, families, and the community at large.