Preventing Suicide: What Actually Helps
Updated: Apr 15
This post is an adapted transcript from Mad Maid Season 1 Episode 4 on Preventing Suicide: What Actually Helps. Mad Maid is a feminist mental health podcast by Michelle Pugle.
I want to talk about what actually helps when it comes to preventing suicide in our communities.One way to help prevent suicide in our communities is via a concept called protective factors.
Protective Factors
Suicide risk is often calculated based on risk factors versus protective factors or how the two intersect.
What’s a protective factor?
A protective factor is any factor that can help reduce risk of suicide. The following factors are proven to reduce risk of suicide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Protective factors can be categorized as individual, relationship, or community, or society-based.
Individual protective factors
Individual Protective Factors are personal factors that help protect against suicide risk.
They include things we can develop or introduce to our lives if we don’t already have them. Examples include:
Effective coping and problem-solving skills
Reasons for living (for example, family, friends, pets, etc.)
Strong sense of cultural identity
Relationship protective factors
Relationship Protective Factors are essentially healthy relationship experiences that protect against suicide risk including having:
Support from partners, friends, and family, and
Feeling connected to others
Community protective factors
Community Protective Factors are supportive, nurturing, and empowering community experiences that protect against suicide risk. They include:
Feeling connected to school, community, and other social institutions
Availability of consistent and high quality physical and behavioral healthcare (in turn, the opposite of this, which is what we are currently experiencing in Canada, are barriers to accessing health care, especially mental health and substance use treatment which can cost thousands per month out of pocket)
Societal or protective factors
Societal Protective Factors are sociological factors or cultural and environmental factors within the larger society that protect against suicide risk.
The two major protective factors against suicide from a sociological standpoint may be having:
Reduced access to lethal means of suicide among people at risk
Cultural, religious, or moral objections to suicide
These can also be considered environmental factors.
Experts say, “environmental factors that cause risk include easy access to the highly lethal means of suicide and protective factors mean easy access to help and treatment services.”
Suicide Risk Safety Plan for Families: https://www.bethe1to.com/safety-plan/
On religion's role (the good and the reality)
Organized religion or religious-based organizations can also help reduce risk of suicide in communities in the following ways:
Religion offers people some answers to existential crisis questions
Religion provides community based on shared morals and beliefs (inclusion and belonging)
Religion provides purpose, structure, tradition, and ritual
Religion doesn’t exist free from health stigmas, though. There’s still ongoing stigma associated with mental health help-seeking and with mental illness diagnoses across different cultures and religions.
Experts even say certain cultural and religious beliefs - for instance, the belief that suicide is a noble resolution of a personal dilemma - can be risk factors for suicide.
So, it’s not as simple as saying more religion would equal less suicide…
Before ending the episode, I also want to highlight some risk factors to watch for. These are known to precede suicidal behaviour and contribute to risk.
Environmental Risk Factors
Job or financial loss
Relational or social loss
Easy access to lethal means
Local clusters of suicide that have a contagious influence
Stigma associated with help-seeking behavior
Certain cultural and religious beliefs - for instance, the belief that suicide is a noble resolution of a personal dilemma
Exposure to the influence of others who have died by suicide, including media exposure
Socio-Cultural Risk Factors
Stigma associated with help-seeking behavior
Barriers to accessing health care, especially mental health and substance abuse treatment
Exposure to the influence of others who have died by suicide, including media exposure