Learning to recognize suicide signs can make all the difference in your or a loved one’s life. Suicide warning signs are one of many indications that it’s time to seek out professional mental health treatment.
If you or a loved one are currently experiencing a suicide crisis, call or text 988 to speak to a crisis counselor right away. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it can help you find the support you need to make it through this difficult moment.
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, reach out to us or find an Elite DNA location near you and get in touch with our treatment experts.
What Leads to Signs of Suicidal Behavior?
The first step in learning to recognize suicidal behavior is to build your own suicide awareness. The vast majority of the time, suicidality does not appear randomly: it is the result of ongoing mental health challenges, sudden drastic life changes, or environmental stressors that simply become too much to handle.
This could include people experiencing events or conditions such as:
- Depression
- Anxiety disorders
- Traumatic brain injury
- Serious medical conditions
- Schizophrenia
- Bipolar disorder
All these situations can lead to people feeling like they have lost hope for the future or are in such a painful and uncomfortable situation that they may consider suicide as a potential way out.
Further, suicide risk factors, such as having a family member who has attempted suicide, childhood abuse or neglect, a previous suicide attempt, or having survived an intensely traumatic experience, can all raise an individual’s risk of attempting or completing suicide.
As difficult as these challenges may be, there is hope for people to break through these challenges and achieve a healthier, happier, and more fulfilling life in recovery. But for people to start this path to recovery, preventing suicide is of paramount importance.
Warning Signs of Suicide
Learning to recognize the warning signs of suicide in yourself or others is critically important. The signs of suicide can appear slowly but identifying them early is the best path for suicide prevention.
Suicide warning signs happen across several different domains, including:
Mood and Behavioral Changes in Suicide
People who are considering a suicide attempt may make sudden changes in their behavior or experience dramatic shifts in mood that can serve as an early indication that something isn’t right. Some of the most common behavioral warning signs include:
- Extreme mood swings
- Reading about ways to die
- A recent experience of depression or anxiety
- Giving away their possessions
- Making a will
- Isolating themselves from friends and family
- Change in sleeping patterns
- Anger or rage
- Taking more risks than usual
Each one of these may be an indicator that somebody is planning to attempt suicide in the near future.
Verbal Cues of Suicide
When people start considering suicide, they will often express it verbally to others. Too often, people dismiss the verbal cues that precede a suicide attempt, either because they are unaware that anything is wrong or are simply too uncomfortable to take their words at face value.
People considering suicide may express themselves verbally by:
- Talking about wanting to die
- Expressing intense guilt or shame
- Saying goodbye to family members and friends
- Saying they feel like they are burdening others
- Talking about death
If a loved one has started speaking about wanting to die or any other of these verbal cues, encourage them to speak to you or a mental health professional about their challenges. Show them empathy and kindness and offer them your help with overcoming a difficult situation. Do not dismiss what they have to say as being flippant or just a fleeting thought – they want to be heard and understood.
Physical Signs of Suicide Attempts
People who attempt suicide often bear physical signs after the fact. When people attempt but do not complete suicide, they may show physical signs such as:
- Ligature marks around the neck
- Cutting scars on the wrist
- Suicide notes throughout the house
- Purchasing a firearm, rope, or hose
- Pallid color or signs of sudden physical illness
- Empty pill bottles
Importantly, there is a significant overlap in the signs of suicide attempts and the signs of self-injury. People who self-harm may have scars on the wrist, arms, or thighs from cuts or burns, but these are not necessarily signs of a suicide attempt. That said, self-injury is a significant warning sign for suicide risk.
Environmental Risk Factors
When people are considering suicide, it is not solely an internal mental health problem. While internal factors may contribute greatly to a person’s risk of suicide, external and environmental factors can be the main driving force or create a tipping point where people feel like they have few options left.
Some of the most common warning signs from an external perspective include:
- Financial crisis or job loss
- Experiencing a breakup, divorce, or rejection
- Prolonged experiences of discrimination or bullying
- Being exposed to death or another person’s suicide
- Loss of a loved one
- Lack of social support
- Access to lethal means
These environmental factors are often outside of a person’s direct control but have an overwhelming personal impact.
Getting Help for Suicidal Thoughts
If you or a loved one are experiencing a suicidal crisis, the best resource to help immediately is to call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or visit 988lifeline.org to speak to a crisis counselor. Mental health professionals and specially trained volunteers are standing by to help people experiencing immediate danger of suicide and can support you in finding long-term treatment options to reduce your risk of suicide in the future.
If you are not in crisis currently, but mental and emotional distress still has you concerned about suicide for yourself or a loved one, seeking out professional mental health treatment is typically the best path toward recovery. There is an abundance of evidence-based treatment options to help people experiencing suicidal thoughts find the support and treatment they need to build happier and healthier lives.
Some of the most common and effective treatment options include:
Talk Therapy
Talk therapy is a time-tested approach to helping people overcome all types of mental illness or personal challenges. Working with an individual therapist can help you uncover the root cause of your mental health struggles, develop healthier coping strategies for overcoming your daily challenges, and support you in building a stronger and healthier life in recovery.
If you need help with suicidal thoughts, working with a therapist is an effective solution. Your therapist can help you with overcoming mental health disorders, such as depression, anxiety, trauma, or PTSD, as well as provide counseling to improve your overall daily functioning and reduce the impact of suicide risk factors on your daily life.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an innovative approach to treating mental illness. It combines the scientific findings of neuroscience with practical clinical applications by using advanced non-invasive technologies that stimulate regions of the brain that are often underactive with the most common and severe mental health conditions.
Psychiatry
Meeting with a psychiatrist can help you determine if medications are the right treatment option for you. Starting a medication regimen can vastly change your mental health outlook, and offers a simple, effective way of getting mental health symptoms under control.
Psychiatry isn’t just a single visit for a prescription. Working with a medication management team can help you find the right prescription medications and proper dosage so that you can get back to feeling like your best self again.
Start Treatment Today at Elite DNA
When you or a loved one need professional support for overcoming suicidal thoughts or other mental health challenges, our team can help you understand your different treatment options, work with you to help you overcome your mental health challenges, provide suicide prevention tips for yourself and your family, and will be there to support you every step of your recovery journey.
Ready to get help? Find an Elite DNA location near you to get in touch with our treatment experts.
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