Last week, I talked about the period of time in my life where I genuinely wanted to end my life. My goal with that post was to give you the knowledge that I was speaking from experience. This week, I wanted to dig into suicide and give you information about some factors that contribute to a person taking their life, as well as warning signs and how to help someone if they are suicidal.

First, let’s look at some statistics.

In the United States, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death. I’m 2019 alone, there were 47,511 suicides, and 1.3 million suicide attempts. What’s even worse is that those numbers were less than those in 2018. Suicide has become an increasingly serious problem, and while we as a nation will never be able to completely eliminate suicides, there are things that can be done to help those who are struggling.

Before we can help, first we need to understand the the factors that contribute to suicide, and the warning signs that can indicate someone is at risk.

When someone gets to the point of trying, or even succeeding, to kill themselves, it’s not normally caused by one specific factor. While I’m not going to give an exhaustive list of factors, but I do want to point out a few large ones.

Mental Health Conditions:

• Depression
• Bipolar disorders
• Substance abuse difficulties
• Schizophrenia

Emotional and Historical Factors:

• Stress (bullying, unemployment, divorce)
• Family history of suicide
• Abuse
• Childhood neglect or trauma

I’m addition, not having proper mental healthcare, or a proper support system can increase the risk of suicide in a person.

Now that you have a grasp of some of the risk factors, let’s look at some of the warning signs.

• Talking about wanting to harm or kill yourself.
• Talking about being a burden to others.
• Withdrawing from family and friends.
• Taking unnecessary risks like driving too fast.
• Extreme mood swings.
• A change in sleeping habits.

The last point I feel the need to discuss is how you should interact with someone who is suicidal. There are a multitude of things you should do, but here are a some of the highlights:

• Let them know you care about them.
  • When someone is feeling suicidal, they may genuinely believe that no one cares for or about them. It’s important that you show that you do care about them, while also making sure you’re not invalidating their beliefs.
    • That could mean, if someone says, “What’s the point in living, no one cares about me.” You should say something to the effect of, “I care about you. I’m here and I’m listening.”
• Listen and be non-judgmental.
  • If someone is considering suicide, they don’t need someone telling them how all of their reasons for dying are wrong. This goes back to the post I wrote that talked about sitting with someone in their grief and suffering. Being that person who listens without being condescending or judgmental can literally save their life.
• If someone is contemplating suicide, call the proper authorities.
  • Call the crisis hotline and possibly emergency services depending on the situation.
• Don’t leave them alone as this could give them a possible outlet to carry out a plan if they have one.
• Distract them.
  • Tell them a story about yourself, watch a good natured tv show, color, sing, play with a pet. The point is to get their minds off the negative thoughts.
• Ask them. If you suspect that some is suicidal, it’s important to ask them. You can’t help unless you know.

There’s your overview of suicide, what causes it, what to look for, and how to help if the situation arises. Each hyperlink above can also be found in the “More Information” page of my website for quick access. They are more thorough than I have the space to be when explaining this subject and do a fantastic job of explaining this difficult subject in an easily digestible way.

Next week, I’m going to put this information into perspective for Christians, and talk about suicide in the church, how it can be addressed, and how we as the Body of Christ, can be a help to those struggling.