Suicide Risk Factors and Signs

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There is a reluctance within contemporary care to using evidence-based suicide care.

There is an over-reliance on a medication-only approach to treating suicidal risk.

Too many systems of care and providers rely on a carceral/controlling approach to suicidality.

Evidence-based, least-restrictive, cost-effective, suicide-care that patients actually prefer must be used.

For decades I have written about proven, evidence-based clinical care for suicidal risk (Jobes, 1995; 2020; 2023; Jobes & Barnett, 2025). My posts on this page often directly or indirectly focus on evidence-based, suicide-focused, clinical care that tends to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. I clearly have strong perspectives based on research on how people who struggle with serious thoughts of suicide should be identified, assessed, stabilized, and ultimately treated in terms of addressing what makes them consider suicide.

While readily acknowledging that there are always exceptions, the gist of my standard argument and critique of contemporary care is as follows:

Current clinical mindsets towards suicidal risk are rooted in medieval thinking about the suicidal “lunatic” who requires a carceral and controlling approach to their struggle—even admitting them to an institution against their will if necessary.

Contemporary mental health care related to suicide is often overly wedded to a medical model approach to assessment and treatment of suicidality that has remarkably limited empirical support.

Inpatient psychiatric hospitalization is relied on far too often with people who could otherwise be safely and effectively treated on an outpatient basis with proven suicide care.

There is a common view that the best treatment of suicidality requires treating major psychiatric disorders with a presumption that such care will impact suicidal........

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