Question
What is a suicide attempt?
Answer
Suicide, by definition, is the act or instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally. A suicide attempt is a non-fatal, self-directed, potentially injurious behavior with an intent to die as a result of the behavior.
It may or may not result in injury to oneself, oftentimes it does. An example of a suicide attempt would be someone who chooses to take a bottle of sleeping pills, but they are found and brought to the emergency room, and they are able to reverse the effects of the sleeping pills and they survive. There may be injury in that case, such as brain damage, although it depends on the situation, or there may be no damage.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the webinar, Suicide Awareness, Assessment and Intervention for Allied Health Professionals, Module 1, presented by Nika Ball, MOT, OTR/L, ATP and Angela Moss, PhD RN, APRN-BC.
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