Practice Standards

Suicide Risk Assessment Standards

The Suicide Risk Assessment Standards PDF provides three example prompt questions with rationale for incorporating all three into a call. This document includes a listing of the 4 core principles: Suicidal Desire, Suicidal Capability, Suicidal Intent and Buffers along with the subcomponents for each.

Co-Pilot

The online Co-Pilot provides example questions for eliciting content related to each subcomponent in the suicide risk assessment standards.Many centers have placed a link on the telephone workers desktop directly to the Co-Pilot so that they can access this resource as needed.

Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior (SLTB) Journal articles

The June 2007 edition of SLTB features 5 articles related to crisis hotlines. All of the articles can be accessed for free on the Guilford Press Website by clicking on each of the links below:
  • An Evaluation of Crisis Hotline Outcomes: Part 1: Non Suicidal Crisis Callers. Read More PDF
  • An Evaluation of Crisis Hotline Outcomes: Part 2: Suicidal Callers. Read More PDF
  • Comparing Models of Helper Behavior to Actual Practice in Telephone Crisis Intervention: A Silent Monitoring Study of Calls to the U.S. 1-800-SUICIDE Network. Read More PDF
  • Which Helper Behaviors and Intervention Styles are Related to Better Short Term Outcomes in Telephone Crisis Intervention? Results from a Silent Monitoring Study of Calls to the U.S. 1-800-SUICIDE Network. Read More PDF
  • Establishing Standards for the Assessment of Suicide Risk Among Callers to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. (please contact Gillian Murphy for requests of literature cited in this article) Read More PDF