Suicide: A Reactive Action
Natalie Staats Reiss, Ph.D., and Mark Dombeck, Ph.D.Suicidal acts seldom happen spontaneously. They are typically planned events triggered by a chain of stressful internal and external circumstances. In other words, most suicide occurs as a reaction to stressful events. Since suicidal impulses are reactive, such urges typically fade as stressful events pass. It is not inevitable that you will continue to feel the urge to commit suicide just because the idea enters your head. If you can find a different, more effective way to cope with or think about the stressful events that have caused you to think in a suicidal direction, your suicidal thoughts and the impulse to act upon them will usually decrease.
As suggested previously, suicidality is often described as happening along a continuum of potential lethality and intent. Lethality has to do with how likely some action is to cause death. Intent has to do with how determined you are to succeed. The more you are determined to kill yourself, and the more lethal the methods you choose to end your life with, the more dangerous is your situation.
Your moment-to-moment level of risk is influenced by multiple factors including whether you have:
- a specific and defined plan for committing suicide
- easy access to the tools you need to carry out your plan
- a history of past suicidal gestures.
All of these things increase your present risk of committing suicide.
Your psychological state is, of course, a vital component in determining your risk. If you are in a good place in life, your risk is lower than if you are experiencing a stressful life crisis. If you are able to cope and manage the level of stress you are currently experiencing, your risk is lower than if you are feeling overwhelmed by circumstance. We will discuss other factors that contribute to your suicide risk in a later section of this center. Right now, it's important to understand that people often move backwards and forwards across this spectrum of suicide-danger-risk as the circumstances that trouble them change and their related emotions come and go.
The Suicide Crisis
Suicidal ideation is relatively common and is not necessarily associated with a crisis situation. Instead, it may be a symptom of an ongoing problem that is difficult to address without outside assistance (such as depression). In contrast, suicidal gestures typically happen in the context of crisis periods, or periods that are associated with overwhelming stress. These periods can feel unbearable with unendurable emotional and/or physical pain, and can seem to have no possible solution other than suicide.
The stresses endured by people in a suicidal crisis are undoubtedly severe and overwhelming, but they are not typically unsolvable or permanent. However, they seem that way to people who are experiencing the crisis. Their strong emotions overwhelm, interfere with and reduce their ability to think rationally and to place their problems in perspective.
The thinking of people who are experiencing a suicidal crisis is typically clouded and negative, intensely self-focused, and highly emotional. Homicidal feelings may be mixed with suicidal feelings if there is a sense that someone else has deliberately caused harm. Feelings of loneliness, isolation, alienation, anger and rage are common, as well as the following kinds of thoughts of hopelessness:
- A sense that things will never get better
- A feeling of inability or lack of motivation to change the situation
- A belief that your emotional pain is permanent or too much to bear
- A sense of personal worthlessness, self-hatred or self-loathing
- A sense that all meaning has been removed from life
- A sense that suicide is the only way to make the stressors stop (founded upon the utter sense of hopelessness described above).
Even though it is very hard to believe it in the moment of crisis, the following statements are almost always true:
- Suicidal crises are temporary conditions.
- The intensity and urgency associated with suicidal crises tends to disappear or diminish with time.
- People CAN be helped through suicidal crises if they are open to accepting appropriate help and treatment.
Resources
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Articles
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The Nature of Suicide
- The Nature of Suicide
- Defining Suicide
- Suicide: A Reactive Action
- Suicide Statistics
- Other Factors Contributing to Suicide Risk
- Suicide Triggers
- Suicide Triggers Continued
- Tying it All Together: Why Does Someone Become Suicidal?
- Becoming Suicidal: Biological Contributions
- Becoming Suicidal: Sociocultural Contributions
- Suicide Prevention and Societal Measures
- Websites
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Coping with Suicidality
- Coping with Suicidality
- How did you get to this suicidal place?
- Why does suicide seem like a solution to your problem(s)?
- How do you know your level of suicide risk?
- Suicide Warning Signs
- Suicide: What Should I Do if I'm Suicidal?
- Suicide: What will happen to you when you ask for help?
- Outpatient Suicide Treatment-Finding A Psychotherapist
- The Initial Suicide Treatment Interview
- Jeremy's Story
- Follow-up Suicide Therapy Visits
- Suicide: Other Things You Can Do to Help Keep Yourself Safe
- Suicide and Self Harm Resources
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Helping A Friend or Family Member who is Suicidal
- Helping a Friend or Family Member Who is Suicidal
- Understanding Suicidal Crises
- Why Do People Become Suicidal and What Can I do to Help?
- How Can I Judge the Level of Suicide Risk?
- What Are Other Suicide Warning Signs?
- What Happens When a Suicidal Person Asks for Help?
- How Do We Find a Therapist for Suicide Outpatient Treatment?
- What Else Can I Do to Help a Suicidal Family Member or Friend?
- How Do I Handle My Own Reactions Following a Suicide or a Suicide Attempt?
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The Nature of Suicide
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News
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Questions and Answers
- How Can I Convince My Suicidal MD Husband To Be Evaluated?
- No Clue What To Do. Help?
- In A Bad Situation
- When Psychotherapy Does Not Help
- Depression Treatment
- Therapist rights to contact Employer
- Does a therapist have to report me as suicidal if I tell her I self injure?
- OCD
- Will I Ever?
- Self-Injury / Self-Harm: How do I stop cutting myself?
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- A Friend in Need
- Mild Personality Disorder
- hard decision
- My husband won't take his medicine
- What is the point of life?
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- I'm a cutter and can't remember anything
- Does thinking of suicide lead to suicide?
- I Sometimes Cut
- When To Ask For Suicide Help
- Inability To Express Myself
- Suicidal
- Suicidal Friend
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- Self-Harming Attention Seeker
- Her Only Friend
- Is This Depression?
- Hate Ex-Boyfriend
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- Talking Dice
- Self-injurer
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- Therapy for Cutters
- Deep Feelings of Suicide
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- The Aftermath of Suicide
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- Cutting
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- Threatened by Suicide if I Leave
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Book & Media Reviews
- A Sadly Troubled History
- Alive
- Autopsy of a Suicidal Mind
- Bloodletting
- Boy Interrupted
- Comprehending Suicide
- Crosses
- Duplicity
- Eight Stories Up
- Fatal Attachments
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- Heavier than Heaven
- Her Husband
- History of Suicide
- How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me
- Human Dignity and Assisted Death
- Leaving You
- Life Interrupted
- Like the Red Panda
- Making Sense of Suicide
- Myths about Suicide
- Night Falls Fast
- No Right Turn
- One in Thirteen
- Relational Suicide Assessment
- Silent Grief
- Suicidal
- Suicidal Behavior in Children and Adolescents
- Suicide
- Sylvia
- Sylvia Plath
- Sylvia Plath Reads
- The Art of Misdiagnosis
- The Clinical Science of Suicide Prevention
- The Final Leap
- Thirteen Reasons Why
- Unholy Ghost
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Links
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Videos
- Developing the Family Intervention for Suicide Prevention (FISP)
- Addressing the Rise of Teen Suicide
- Feeling down? Let's talk - Prevention of suicide among adolescents
- NPW 2017: Suicide and Substance Use in Young People
- Addressing Suicide
- Suicide Warning Signs
- How to Ask if Someone is Suicidal
- Suicide Tops Injury Deaths
- Assessment and Intervention with Suicidal Clients: Volume 2
- Assessment and Intervention with Suicidal Clients: Volume 1
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14 more
- Assessment and Intervention with Suicidal Clients: Volume 3
- Preventing suicide: a global imperative
- Youth Suicide Risk
- Preventing Death by Suicide-Strategies to Help Children, Youth and Families
- The bridge between suicide and life
- Beyond the Data -- Preventing Suicide: A Comprehensive Public Health Approach
- Preventing Suicide: A Comprehensive Public Health Approach
- For Those Considering Suicide
- How to Help Someone Who is Suicidal
- Teen Suicide Prevention
- Reach Out - Preventing Teen Suicide
- Suicide Prevention with Lynn Keane
- Addressing Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors in Substance Abuse Treatment
- Suicide Signs
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