Coping with Suicidal Urges: An Important Factor for Suicide Risk Assessment and Intervention

Abstract

Suicide-related coping refers to strategies for adaptively managing suicidal urges and can be important an important factor for assessing risk and targeting intervention. The current study evaluated whether suicide-related coping predicted a suicidal event within 90-days, independently of other known risk factors. Veterans (<i>N</i> = 64) were evaluated shortly after a suicidal crisis and completed several assessments, including a measure of suicide-related coping. Multivariate analyses showed that suicide-related coping remained protective of a suicidal event (<i>OR</i> = 0.93; <i>p</i> = .047) after adjusting for suicidal ideation, previous suicide attempts, mood disorder, distress tolerance, and gender. Suicide-related coping may augment commonly assessed clinical factors in prediction of a suicidal event and is a suitable target for suicide prevention efforts.