Suicide Awareness by Kelly Jean Sullivan

  
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Mood and other risk factors

Psychological factors, distressing situations or genetics can increase the likelihood of someone considering, attempting or dying by suicide, according to SAMHSA. These risk factors can’t cause or predict a suicide attempt, but being aware of them is important, according to SAMHSA:

• Hopelessness. “They don’t have a sense of the future getting better, or they just feel really unable to imagine not being in the pain that they’re in,” Roeske said.
• Extreme mood swings. This includes if someone who’s usually really stressed or depressed suddenly seems calm or cheery, according to Roeske and Johns Hopkins Medicine. This person might have decided to attempt suicide without telling anyone, and they feel relieved by that. Also indicative of this is cheeriness after a depressive episode.
• Obsession with death or lethal means. Some people have artistic or musical interests that are more grim than others, but if their engagement with those things surpasses what’s normal for them, that would be concerning, Roeske said.
• Experiences of abuse, neglect or other traumas
• Substance abuse problems
• Mental disorders such as schizophrenia, depression or anxiety, and personality disorders, especially coupled with lack of treatment
• Severe physical illnesses, including chronic pain. “Especially if it’s sort of recalcitrant and very difficult to treat, people can become very hopeless,” Roeske said. “It’s really just, ‘I don’t want to feel this anymore and I can’t find any other way. I feel trapped.’”
• Family or personal history of suicide. “The greatest predictor of completed suicide is past suicide attempts — the reason being is because you’ll see an escalation in lethality, or the means by which someone does it,” Roeske said.
• Job or financial loss
• Relationship problems or loss
• Loss of interest in activities or school
• Prolonged stress from other causes, such as harassment or bullying
• Easy access to potentially fatal means
• Exposure to a suicide or to graphic or sensationalized accounts of suicide. “On the one hand, we don’t want people to shy away from the topic of suicide. We want people to approach and even use the word with others and have discussions around it,” Roeske said. But if a depiction or account gratuitously romanticizes or justifies the sense of relief that might be garnered from suicide, that’s problematic.
• Insufficient social support or sense of isolation