Suicide Risk Factors and Signs

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Suicide risk can involve experiences of disconnection, overwhelming distress, and loss of hope.

Research suggests post-traumatic growth (PTG) is associated with lower levels of suicidal ideation.

A shift can begin with small movements toward 3 aspects of the PTG process: connection, regulation, and hope.

The night before Kevin Hines jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge, he wanted someone to ask if he was thinking about harming himself. He was.

Kevin describes that night, and the day he jumped, in painstaking detail in his book Cracked, Not Broken. What is striking about Kevin's story is how often he describes longing for human connection while simultaneously feeling unable to reach for it.

As he rode the city bus to the Golden Gate Bridge with the intention of ending his life, he wished someone would say something to him. If anyone communicated that they cared, that he mattered, that he wasn't a burden, he resolved that he would not jump that day. But nobody did. Kevin describes tears streaming uncontrollably down his face as he rode that bus. His story raises an uncomfortable question: What might have happened if someone had noticed how he was doing?

There is another striking feature of Kevin's story: the profound dysregulation he was experiencing. He wasn't sleeping. He was in psychosis. He was experiencing overwhelming psychological pain and could not find a way to interrupt or reduce it.

His story points to something else: When we are overwhelmed, our ability to access coping strategies and choose something that might help us feel differently can become severely constrained. Even a small amount of relief or connection can open up new possibility for someone who is profoundly dysregulated.

And there is one other powerful aspect of Kevin’s experience worth noting: the loss of hope. In Kevin’s account of that night, he could not see a future that felt........

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