Danger Signs of Suicide
- Talking or joking about suicide.
- Statements about being reunited with a deceased loved one.
- Statements about hopelessness, helplessness, or worthlessness. Example: “Life is useless.” “Everyone would be better off without me.” “It doesn’t matter. I won’t be around much longer anyway.” “I wish I could just disappear.”
- Preoccupation with death. Example: recurrent death themes in music, literature, or drawings.
- Writing letters or leaving notes referring to death or “the end”.
- Suddenly happier, calmer.
- Loss of interest in things one cares about.
- Unusual visiting or calling people one cares about – saying their good-byes.
- Giving possessions away, making arrangements, setting one’s affairs in order.
- Self-destructive behaviour (alcohol/drug abuse, self-injury or mutilation, promiscuity).
- Risk-taking behaviour (reckless driving/excessive speeding, carelessness around bridges, cliffs or balconies, or walking in front of traffic).
- Having several accidents resulting in injury. Close calls or brushes with death. Obsession with guns or knives.
Just because an individual is doing these things does not mean his mind is made up.
He can be stopped! He has not chosen death, but is instead focusing only on easing the pain or ending the pain. Pain which is usually the result of an illness – a chemical imbalance in the brain that is, many times, treatable. If a person understood that he could have the life back that he once had, before the depressive illness, he would almost certainly chose life, not death.