Preventing Suicide: Risk, Protection and What Everyone Can Do

Suicide is preventable. Anyone can learn the warning signs, offer support and build healthy connections, and prevention tips, resources and treatment are available.

Prevention begins long before a crisis. Healthy environments for individuals, families and communities can keep people from feeling suicidal in the first place. They can also lessen the effect on a community when a suicide does happen — reducing risk among those who lost a loved one, and helping them heal.

Risk factors

Risk varies with the number and intensity of certain factors, including life circumstances and community conditions. Factors that may raise the likelihood of suicide include:

• previous suicide attempts
• a history of depression or other mental illness
• financial problems or job loss
• bullying or social isolation
• lack of access to health care
• easy access to lethal means
• problems in intimate partner or family relationships

These experiences do not predict suicide or suicide attempts: most people who have them do not attempt or die by suicide.

Protective factors

Some experiences and community conditions protect people, or act as a buffer:

• coping and problem-solving skills
• a strong sense of cultural identity
• support from friends and family
• feeling connected to others
• the availability of high-quality health care

Parents and caregivers

Raising children can be hard — it's OK to ask for help. Reach out to babysitters, childcare providers, family members or close friends, raise your concerns with your child's doctor, and find out whether your community offers support groups or programs for parents and caregivers. You can also:

• Talk with your child about their mental health, and support them through the challenges they face.
• Look for parenting skills training to build stronger relationships with your children, with support from people who care about you and from your community.
• Watch for signs of distress — anger, withdrawal, changes in school performance, sleep or eating — and seek help when needed.
• Store firearms and prescriptions securely, for example in a gun safe or lock box, so children and other unauthorized people cannot reach them.

Secure storage

Putting firearms or medications out of sight or out of reach is not secure storage. CDC has guidance on storing firearms securely and storing medications safely.

What everyone can do

• Recognize the warning signs in friends and family, and connect anyone in crisis with the 24/7 988 Lifeline or a mental health provider. Signs vary, but may include talking about wanting to die, feeling hopeless, being in unbearable pain or being a burden to others; drinking or using drugs more; or withdrawing and isolating themselves.
• Bring people together in shared activities that ease isolation — community clean-ups, tree planting, group exercise — so they become more involved and connect with others.

What institutions can do

• Schools can run programs that teach communication, problem-solving, empathy, emotional awareness and regulation, conflict management and resilience, and train gatekeepers to notice warning signs, safely intervene and refer students to support services.
• Media organizations can follow ethical, safe practices for reporting on suicide.
• Businesses can build a supportive environment that reduces job strain, actively promotes mental health and makes crisis resources easy to reach, and train gatekeepers and managers to recognize the signs and safely intervene.
• Public health practitioners, partners and other professionals play a vital role too — see CDC's Public Health Approach to Suicide Prevention.

Treatment

• For people who are considering or have attempted suicide, treatment can mean connecting them with mental health services, and putting space and time between them and lethal means.
• To prevent another attempt, it can include regular therapy and check-ins with medical providers.
• Losing a friend, peer, family member or other close contact to suicide can raise a person's own risk. For families and survivors of suicide loss, treatment can include debriefing sessions, counseling or bereavement support groups.

Evidence-based programs

A few examples, drawn from CDC's Suicide Prevention Resource for Action, which has more guidance and strategies:

• Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR): an hour-long training that aims to reduce stigma and increase knowledge of risk factors, warning signs and resources.
• Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM): a school-based program for teenagers ages 13–17, using discussion, group work and role-play on themes such as stress and crisis, suicidal thoughts, helping a friend in need and asking for help.
• Signs of Suicide (SOS): a school-based program that teaches middle and high school students to recognize signs of depression and suicide risk and how to seek help; it also screens for elevated depression and substance use disorders.
• The Incredible Years: early intervention programs for parents, teachers, early childhood educators, counselors and other professionals who work with children ages 0–12.

If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the United States.

Sources

Based on "Preventing Suicide," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The source's stock photograph is not reproduced.