If someone tells you they're thinking about suicide, you should take their distress seriously, listen nonjudgmentally, and help them get to a professional for evaluation.
There is no definitive measure to predict suicide or suicidal behavior. Researchers have identified factors that place individuals at higher risk for suicide, but very few persons with these risk factors will actually commit suicide.
Risk factors include: mental illness, substance abuse, previous suicide attempts, family history of suicide, history of being sexually abused, impulsive or aggressive tendencies.
Suicide is a relatively rare event and it is therefore difficult to predict which persons with these risk factors will ultimately commit suicide.
First and foremost a person must be honest with how they are truly feeling. If suicidal thoughts cross your mind, it is absolutely necessary that you seek advice. Losing two family members to suicide is something I experienced before the age of 25 years old. Highly suggested is following exposure to suicide or suicidal behaviors within one's family or peer group, suicide risk can be minimized by having family members, friends, peers, and colleagues of the victim evaluated by a mental health professional. Persons deemed at risk for suicide should then be referred for additional mental health services.
Although the majority of people who have depression do not die by suicide, having major depression does increase suicide risk compared to people without depression. The risk of death by suicide may, in part, be related to the severity of the depression. New data on depression that has followed people over long periods of time suggests that about 2 percent of those people ever treated for depression in an outpatient setting will die by suicide. Among those ever treated for depression in an inpatient hospital setting, the rate of death by suicide is twice as high (4 percent). Those treated for depression as inpatients following suicide ideation or suicide attempts are about three times as likely to die by suicide (6 percent) as those who were only treated as outpatients. There are also dramatic gender differences in lifetime risk of suicide in depression. Whereas about 7 percent of men with a lifetime history of depression will die by suicide, only 1 percent of women with a lifetime history of depression will die by suicide.
Another way about thinking of suicide risk and depression is to examine the lives of people who have died by suicide and see what proportion of them were depressed. From that perspective, it is estimated that about 60 percent of people who commit suicide have had a mood disorder (e.g., major depression, bipolar disorder, dysthymia). Younger persons who kill themselves often have a substance abuse disorder in addition to being depressed.
Clearly what is important here is seeking the advice of a doctor, therapist, pastor, rabbi, or someone you can trust. General medicine includes mental health, and there is always the possibility that a cause of depression is a side effect from a drug you are taking for something entirely different.
Summarizing the most important point of this article is to pay attention to changes in your loved ones behavior and conversations if they are showing signs of depression. You must be your own best advocate and that of your loved ones.
http://www.healthyminds.org/ a part of American Psychiatric Association
