Practice Standards

Suicide Risk Assessment Standards

The Suicide Risk Assessment Standards 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. Articles may be available at local libraries, or you may purchase access to the articles from Wiley Online Library.

• An Evaluation of Crisis Hotline Outcomes: Part 1: Non Suicidal Crisis Callers. Check library availability. Pay-Per-View.
• An Evaluation of Crisis Hotline Outcomes: Part 1: Non Suicidal Crisis Callers. Check library availability. Pay-Per-View.
• 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. Check library availability. Pay-Per-View.
• 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. Check library availability. Pay-Per-View.
• 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) Check library availability. Pay-Per-View.

Imminent Risk Policy

In February 2011, the Lifeline released the new National Suicide Prevention Lifeline—Policy for Helping Callers at Imminent Risk of Suicide. This policy, developed over the course of several years, is a result of extensive work by the Lifeline to provide network centers with unified parameters for assisting our highest risk callers. It contains significant contributions from participating centers, researchers and trainers in the field of suicide prevention and represents consensus expert opinion in this central domain of crisis hotline work. Since April 1, 2012, all Lifeline centers had successfully incorporated this policy into ongoing practice.

The Lifeline Policy for Helping Callers at Imminent Risk of Suicide is a logical sequel to the Lifeline Risk Assessment Standards: Now that risk has been identified, how do you effectively support and assist the person at risk? The Imminent Risk Policy essentially focuses on three core areas:

1. The use of Active Engagement, which requires that hotline staff make reasonable efforts to collaborate with callers at imminent risk to better secure their safety.
2. The use of Active Rescue, which requires that staff take all action necessary to secure the safety of a caller and initiate emergency response with or without the caller’s consent if they are unwilling or unable to take action on their own behalf.
3. A focus on Collaboration with other community crisis and emergency services towards better assuring the continuous care and safety of Lifeline callers determined to be at imminent risk of suicide.