forgive the out of state intrusion but...
unfortunately, even mental health professionals who have been appropriately trained in suicide ideation assessment and using validated standard assessment protocols, find they do not always work across the board. there are 'assessment' questions which the subject can respond to but the individual's behaviour and affect is paramount for a mental health professional to define the severity, intensity, lethality, of any persons thoughts and behaviour which could lead the person to ultimately do self-harm to themselves or others.
if this is not the first time presenting ideation, individuals know the 'proper' response to assessment questions and answer with the 'appropriate' answer, thus misdirecting someone from a appropriate diagnosis.
Finally, the mental health profession has one other ace in their back pocket...they can contact the proper authorities and immediately put someone on a three day hold.
sorry but 'reading' someone's ideation is not done by a lay person who is standing over the gun counter 'chatting' a can set of questions.
ipser
there are going to be three groups of people
1) those who are suicidal or near to it and who will try their best to give the 'proper' response/answer and misderect. Their suicidal state of mind will be hard to discover and yes... they will usually pass screening
2) those who are suicidal but are open to respond in the affirmative if asked.
(2) do exist. Assuming a (2) who goes to the gun store to buy a gun have taken a substantial step. Not all who buy a gun with the intent to kill themselves, will of course and some who buy a gun with no intent to do so, may later develop the desire to kill theirself.
Cops etc. deal with group 2 all the time. I've seen tons of examples where people who are suicidal, will admit it. It's happened to me many times, and of course I am duty bound to invol them and I have done so scores of times... people in group (2) being a decent size chunk of the group of people i've invol'd. You think that people (you imply ALL people who are suicidal) who are suicidal and have previously presented ideation will always try to avoid the person detecting them to be suicidal.
anybody who has ever dealt with suicidal/parasuicidal persons knows that group 2 exists. You make it sound like discovering these people requires great skill and great trickery to see behind their automatically present intent to deceive you about their intent.
3) group 3 are those who aren't suicidal.
Again, rubbish. Many people are mandatory reporters in our society and the mental health system has made suicide less likely by using intervention and with the help of the responders in the field to make the initial detection.
ironically, i happen to be a cop who went to grad school for psychology. There is nothing I learned in grad school regarding how to discover suicidal intent during interaction with a patient, that the average salty first responder hasn't learned over time and through training. It's not rocket science at all.
ime, most of the suicide cases I have seen, there was "fair warning" given before they finaly pulled the trigger. It's a rarity for them not to reach out at all.
and of course for every suicidal person who commits suicide w.o giving some sort of warning and who would not reveal their state of mind to anybody querying them (the group that questioning will not reveal ) , there are several more who gave warning and got intervention
Nothing in psychology works across the board. People are complex, differ in all sorts of ways, etc. Psychology is a really "soft science". calling it a science at all is a stretch and the longer I stayed in grad school for psychology as well as spent time on the street dealing with tons of EDP's, the more I became convinced of the field's low rate of succesful prediction for example etc.
NOTE: I am not saying that I support the practice of gun sellers making these queries. I am simply pointing out that one of the effective (SOMETIMES) methods in determining whether a person is suicidal is to simply ask... simple questions... that one does not need to be a psychologist or MHP to employ with DECENT success.
People are so diverse, complex, unpredictable etc. on an individual basis (aggregate behavior ofen form relatively predictable trends) that there is no set of questions and no amount of training that would make a person anywhere near 100% effective in identifying the suicidal person before its too late.
of course.
But that;s not the same thing as saying no layperson can do this with some people/some of the time.
heck, i ve had plenty of people be 100% forthright and open to questioning, and many others have required a bit more questioning and observing.
The REASON many suicidal persons will admit it even at the point where they have gone as far towards completion of the act, as entering a gun store and trying to purchase a firearm is that there is often psychological pressure within to divulge, and it feels good to make these admissions. Many others go all the way to committing suicide hoping all the time that there will be somebody who will notice their behavior/state of mind and intervene. How do we know this? from interviews with people who made bona fide suicide attempts (i am not talking the typical slice wrist with butter knife case... the weakass quasi suicidal acts are as a matter of statistics going to be females most of the time fwiw. females have a much higher rate of Attempting suicide than men. I know this from training and grad school study but havge also seen it clearly in the suicide and attempt suicide calls I have responded to.
Just like many people who commit a crime will confess if asked "did you do it".Many think people only confess when they are skillfully tricked, or after long and fatiguing questioning by LEO's, but the simple truth is, just like with suicidals, there is psychological pressure to divulge/confess. And again, based on training , experience, and questioning criminals who confessed to me, I've learned that for most the pressure was there and very uncomfortable AND divulging./confessing brought relief. Like q junkie getting his next fix after starting to go through withdrawals , and feeling the wave of endorphins crashing in their brain and bringing them relief, many suicidals will get a similar pressure reducing good feeling upon divulging, Again, not my opinion from a vacuum but from study , trainign an extensive experience. Why would a guilty person confess to a crime, especially knowing their confession might be the only thing needed to get them incarcerated? Because of rather counterintuitive psychology. The same holds true for suicidals.
And just like many interrogators wil fail to get a confession froma guilty man, manyothers whether MHP's or laypeople will fail to get the person to divulge his suicidal state of mind
Like i said, im not arguing to support this practice im just saying the person i am responding to is making a fallacious arguments, based on an untrue understandin of the internal and external working so to speak of the suicidal person's brain
i've had the pleasure of dealing with so so so many edp's in all sorts of crises to include those that result in suicidal ideation to be confident in these assertions... many of which were later corroborated that much more by the studies etc. referenced by my professors.
Fwiw, Jails ask screening questions of arrestees they receive to include questions asking about the person being suicidal or not because it'[s their duty to protect that person AND because time has shown that ceteris paribus, a smaller %AGE OF inmates will commit suicide in the jail that does this screening , then in jails that don't
