Notice: This informational website is not intended as a crisis response or hotline. Local crisis hotline numbers can be found in the front of your local phone book or call 911.

 
The base for suicide prevention comes from observing suicide risk factors, suicide protective factors, and their interactions.
 
Suicide risk factors are things that increase the potential for a person's suicide or suicidal behavior. A person's age, gender, or ethnicity can increase the impact of certain risk factors or combinations of risk factors for them. Understanding risk factors can help counteract the myth that suicide is a random act or results from stress alone.

Suicide protective factors are things that reduce the potential for a person's suicide or suicidal behavior.
 
Protective factors include attitudes and behaviors. Both risk and protective factors include a wide variety of characteristics of individuals and groups. These characteristics include things like a person's family history, biology, psychology, and socio-cultural situation. They also include environmental conditions, such as easy access to the highly lethal means of suicide or easy access to help and treatment services.

The following Risk and Protective Factors for Suicide are identified in the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention: Goals and Objectives for Action.

 

Risk Factors for Suicide: Biological, Psychological and Social Risk Factors
	Previous suicide attempt
	Mental disorders - particularly mood disorders such as depression and bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and certain personality disorder diagnoses
	Alcohol and substance abuse disorders
	Family history of suicide
	History of trauma or abuse
	Hopelessness
	Impulsive and/or aggressive tendencies
	Some major physical illnesses
Environmental Risk Factors
	Job or financial loss
	Relational or social loss
	Easy access to lethal means
	Local clusters of suicide that have a contagious influence
Socio-cultural Risk Factors
	Lack of social support and sense of isolation
	Stigma associated with help-seeking behavior
	Barriers to accessing health care, especially mental health and substance abuse treatment
	Certain cultural and religious beliefs - for instance, the belief that suicide is a noble resolution of a personal dilemma
	Exposure to the influence of others who have died by suicide, including media exposure

Information about risk and protective factors contributes to selecting useful interventions for suicide prevention. But much remains to be learned; especially about how these risk and protective factors interact across the life course and how community suicide prevention programs can best integrate this information.

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References:
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
http://www.afsp.org
National Institute Mental Health
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/
Georgia Suicide Prevention Plan