Examining suicide from a life span perspective

Abstract

Developed from a life span perspective, the suicide-trajectory model includes four categories of risk factors: biological, psychological, cognitive, and environmental. These four risk factors interact with each other, lending their relative weights to the development of suicidal ideation. Suicidal ideation may then lead to warning signs and triggering events, followed by attempted suicide. It is possible to predict certain normative events or crises that may make suicide a more likely choice. Because these normative events vary by age and developmental level, an understanding of life span development is helpful to the student of suicide. The suicide-trajectory model provides a framework for systematically examining each life stage and evaluating a given individual's potential for suicide as revealed by the variables in the model.