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• APPENDIX 1: SUICIDE - FICTION AND FACT
• APPENDIX 2: SIGNS OF SUICIDAL INTENT

APPENDIX 1: SUICIDE - FICTION AND FACT

• Fiction: People who talk about suicide don’t take their own life.
  Fact: Most people who kill themselves have given definite warnings of their intention
  
• Fiction: Suicidal people are absolutely intent upon dying
  Fact: Most suicidal people are ambivalent about living and dying: they gamble with death but may retain the desire to live
  
• Fiction: Suicide happens without warning
  Fact: Suicidal people often give indications of thoughts (sometimes before the thoughts become intentions) by words or actions.
  
• Fiction: Once a person becomes suicidal, he/she is suicidal forever.
  Fact: Suicidal thoughts may return, but they are not permanent, and in some people they may never return
  
• Fiction: After a crisis, improvement means that the suicide risk is over
  Fact: Many suicides occur in a period of improvement when the person has the energy and the will to turn despairing thoughts into self destructive action.
  
• Fiction: Suicide occurs mainly among the rich/the poor
  Suicide occurs in all groups in Society
  
• Fiction: Suicidal behaviour is a sign of mental illness
  Fact: Suicidal behaviour indicates deep unhappiness but not necessarily mental illness
  
• Fiction: You are either the suicidal type or you’re not
  Fact: It could happen to anybody

APPENDIX 2 - SIGNS OF SUICIDAL INTENT

SUICIDE RISK IS GREATER WHEN THERE IS:

• Recent loss or the break up of a close relationship
• Current or anticipated unhappy change in health or circumstances, e.g. Retirement or financial problem
• Painful and/or disabling illness
• Heavy use of or dependency on alcoholic/other drugs
• History of earlier suicidal behaviour
• History of suicide in the family
• Depression

PEOPLE OFTEN SHOW THEIR SUICIDAL FEELINGS BY:

• Being withdrawn and unable to relate
• Having definite ideas of how to end one's life and may be speaking of tidying up affairs or giving other indications of planning suicide
• Talking about feeling isolated and lonely
• Expressing feelings of failure, uselessness, hopelessness or loss of self esteem
• Constantly dwelling on problems for which there seem to be no solutions
• Expressing the lack of supporting philosophy of life, such as a religious belief