A suicidal person may show many warning signs or possible none at all. Many of these signs are hard to detect.
Some of the signs that are harder to detect include:
- Isolation
- Feeling confused or out of place
- Giving away possessions (Giesman)
- Feeling worthless and depressed (Muench-Miller)
Other symptoms may consist of:
- Extreme personality changes
- Fatigue
- No longer taking care of their appearance
- Trouble concentrating
- Loss of appetite ("NAMI")
- Previous suicide attempts
- Family history of suicide
- Psychiatric or anxiety disorders (Suicide Lector)
- Needing to get their "affairs" in order
- Heavy drinking
- Using drugs
- Talking about death (Vorvick)
One way to remember some of these many warning signs is the acronym Is Path Warm. I stands for Ideation or the idea of committing suicide. S stands for substance abuse. P is for purposelessness so the person might feel as if there is no reason to keep living. A signifies anxiety and T represents feeling trapped as if there is no other way out. H is for hopelessness. W stands for withdrawal from the world and their normal lives. Anger is shown by the A and recklessness by the R. Someone who is suicidal may not always be thinking straight and may make poor decisions. Finally, M signifies mood changes which can often occur in a suicidal person (Suicide Lector).
All of these symptoms and signs may indicate that a person is thinking about suicide, but not necessarily all of them will appear (Vorvick). Sometimes someone will show no signs at all that are detectable by a person without enormous amounts of training. If you think someone is suicidal, be open with them and ask about it. This will not make the person want to kill themselves even more, but rather will form a line of safety and an opportunity to find alternative solutions to the problems they are dealing with (Muench-Miller).
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