Risk Factors
A review found that 87% of persons committing suicide were diagnosable with a mental disorder based on history from their friends and family following their death. In England, 27% of people who committed suicide between 2000 and 2010 had been in contact with mental health services in the year prior to their deaths. There are a number of other factors correlated with suicide risk, including drug addiction, availability of a means to commit the act, family history of suicide, or previous head injury.
Socio-economic factors such as unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and discrimination may trigger suicidal thoughts. Poverty may not be a direct cause, but impoverished individuals are a major risk group for depression, itself a risk factor for suicide. Recent research shows that, controlling for own income and individual characteristics, individual suicide risk rises with others’ income. A history of childhood physical or sexual abuse or time spent in foster care is also a risk factor.
Hopelessness---the feeling that there is no prospect of improvement in one's situation---is a strong indicator of suicide. One study found that among a group of people previously hospitalized for suicidal tendencies, 91% of those who scored a 10 or higher on the Beck Hopelessness Scale would eventually commit suicide. Perceived burdensomeness, which is a feeling that one's existence is a burden to others such as one's family, is often coupled with hopelessness Also, feelings of loneliness, whether subjective (i.e., experienced as a personal feeling), or objective (i.e., living alone or being without friends and lacking social support) are strong mediators of suicidal ideation.
Advocacy of suicide has been cited as a contributing factor. Intelligence may also be a factor. Initially proposed as a part of an evolutionary psychology explanation, which posited a minimum intelligence required for one to commit suicide, the positive correlation between IQ and suicide has been replicated in a number of studies. Some scientists doubt, however, that intelligence can be a cause of suicide, and intelligence is no longer a predictor of suicide when regressed with national religiousness and perceptions of personal health. According to the American Psychiatric Association, "religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts and more first-degree relatives who committed suicide than subjects who endorsed a religious affiliation," perhaps because individuals with no religious affiliation have fewer moral objections to suicide than believers.
One study found that a lack of social support, a deficit in feelings of belongingness and living alone were crucial predictors of a suicide attempt. One study found that among prison inmates, suicide was more likely among inmates who had committed a violent crime.
Read more about this topic: Suicide
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