Treatment for Teen Suicidal Ideation

Causes of Teen Suicide

The leading cause of suicidal death is the despair, distress, and hopelessness that arises from trauma, depression, anxiety, or other mental health disorders. These underlying issues may be catalyzed by a wide variety of risk factors and painful experiences, including:

• A family history of suicide and/or substance abuse
• Traumatic experiences such as abuse, exposure to violence, or the death of a family member
• Social isolation and loneliness
• Economic concerns within the family
• Illness in the family
• Cyberbullying—research shows that cyberbullying victims are twice as likely to attempt suicide and self-harm
• Relationship conflicts at home
• Lack of access to mental healthcare services
• Failing or struggling in school

The pandemic has increased the likelihood of all of these risk factors. Remote schooling, social distancing, and economic and health concerns all heighten teen trauma, depression, and anxiety. Consequently, experts believe there may be a corresponding increase in the teen suicide rate.

How to Help a Teenager with Suicidal Thoughts

First and foremost, parents and other adults who interact with adolescents need to ensure that a teen who is thinking about or considering suicide receives suicidal ideation treatment. Here are a few tips to help parents determine whether such treatment is needed, and to make sure that struggling teens get support before their mental health challenges escalate.

• Communicate regularly with teens, even if it takes an extra effort to find ways to do so.
• If a teen talks about hurting or killing themselves, ask them directly whether they are actually thinking about suicide, or if this is a way of letting you know they’re suffering. Listen carefully to their answer, and react with compassion rather than anger, fear, or judgment.
• Don’t chalk up an adolescent’s anger or withdrawal to simply being a teen; take the time to decode teen behavior and figure out what’s going on underneath.
• Strive to create family harmony and minimize conflict at home.
• Limit the amount of time teens spend alone in their room or unsupervised.
• Make sure teens can’t access life-threatening items that are kept in the house, including knives, guns, and medications.
• Monitor teens’ online activities in order to detect cyberbullying and to screen for conversations or media consumption focuses on suicide and self-harm.

4 Questions to Measure Suicidal Behavior and Ideation

The Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire includes 30 questions to help screen for teen suicide risk. However, researcher Lisa Horowitz and her team condensed these to four essential questions that healthcare providers and others can ask in order to identify whether suicidal ideation treatment is needed:

1. In the past few weeks, have you felt that you or your family would be better off if you were dead?
2. In the past few weeks, have you wished you were dead?
3. In the past week, have you been having thoughts about killing yourself?
4. Have you ever tried to kill yourself?

If a teen’s answers indicate that they are experiencing suicidal ideation, take the following actions:

1. Do not leave them alone.
2. Remove anything that could be used in a suicide attempt, including firearms, alcohol, drugs, razors, or other sharp objects.
3. Call 911 or the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or take the person to the nearest emergency room to seek help from a medical or mental health professional.