Sentence Stems for Asking About Suicide

Resistance can show up in many forms. Any of the following might be a sign that asking about suicide is something you may want to work on;

You become overly verbose, overcomplicating things with too many words
You revert to passive language like ‘hurt yourself’
You can’t quite get a sense of whether there are safety issues to attend to
You sometimes think it wouldn’t be appropriate
You don’t want to break connection so you avoid asking

This isn’t an exhaustive list of course. But if you find yourself falling into doing one or more of these, the following sentence stems might really help you break those behaviours and replace them. If you want sentence stems for simply inviting more information, click here.

Contextualise Attending to Safety by Attending to Feelings

Sometimes when people live with x for y time, they can think of suicide. Have you had…
I can really hear how distressing it’s been for you living with x, have you…
It’s clear what an immeasurable loss you’ve gone through after x, have you…
You’ve been living with these thoughts for x years, have you…
The thoughts have been like torment for you, there seems to be a deep sense of helplessness there. Have you…

Sentence Stems for Addressing Suicide

When you say… It makes me wonder are you talking about suicide?
It sounds like you’ve decided tonight is when you want to die.
Are you going to kill yourself today?
When will you end your life?
Are you intending to kill yourself tonight?
You’ve told me about your suicide plan, when are you intending to…?

Sentence Stems for Addressing Immediacy

It’s clearly been y for you.. Have you done anything to act on those thoughts tonight?
I can hear how y things have become.. Have you taken any steps toward killing yourself already?
The sense of y sounds like it’s become x.. Have you already done something to end your life today?
I can hardly imagine how y things have been for you to have gotten to this point.. What have you done to kill yourself this afternoon?

When working through the support tool, remember that every stage you’re at can use contextualising emotions. Asking about the plan? Validate their struggle first. Asking about the means? Normalise their emotions first. Asking who’s home? Reflect what you’ve heard about their relationship first, etc.

So much of the real safety offered in crisis support comes as a direct result of attending to emotional needs by listening and connecting with empathy. That empathy has to be illustrated, either verbally or over text, we’ve got to make it direct.

This post is written specifically for crisis support and mental health work, if you’d like to read more, click here.

I would really appreciate every stray thought and piece of feedback you have so please do reach out via socials if you’d like to chat.