Each year, about 32,000 Americans decide that the pain, hopelessness, shame or anger they feel has made continuing to live an overwhelming burden, and they commit suicide. Knowledge of the characteristics of people who attempt suicide empowers those they interact with daily to bring hopefulness, a sense of perspective and a feeling of personal power when the world is a very dark place.
General Characteristics
The National Adolescent Health Information Center estimates that 15 percent of adolescents contemplate suicide in any given 12-month period, based on self-reports. The NAHIC researchers acknowledge that this number is likely to be even higher, as suicidality still carries a negative connotation. But suicidal thoughts are not only seen in the young. In studying adults, researchers at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration found 8.3 million men and women, roughly 3.7 percent of the U.S. population, seriously considered committing suicide in the preceding year. Neither is that group static. One person may have suicidal thoughts after a breakup in college, another reaches this point during postpartum depression and a third, late in life when physical pain makes life intolerable.
Substance abuse, untreated depression, schizophrenia and personality disorders increase suicidal risk. Ninety percent of those who make a suicide attempt either have a mental health diagnosis or exhibit the cardinal signs and symptoms associated with a diagnosis.
Cardinal Characteristics
Hopelessness, helplessness and a sense of futility are the cardinal signs of suicidal depression, the most common pathology seen in people who attempt to take their own lives. These three emotions present differently at various ages and in different cultures, but the feelings are the same. Said in many ways, their message is, "Life is always bad. Life never is going to be better. No matter what I do, I cannot make life better."
Co-Factors
Human brains function best when they can see and solve problems; depression at a suicidal level is like pulling down a screen; one that blocks the view of possible solutions to a problem. Substances that cloud judgment increase the risk of suicide by decreasing the chance of finding a creative solution, and depression raises the chance of rumination, thinking the same negative thoughts over and over again. If the individual also is isolated from others, there is no one who can offer a fresh, hopeful perspective.
