21/08/2025
🧠 Rethinking Su***de Risk Assessment
After attending a clinical skills group where a colleague walked us through the Staying Safe from Su***de: Best Practice Guidance for Safety Assessment, Formulation and Management, I was struck by just how stark the statistics are.
🕯️ 17 people die by su***de every day in the UK.
Of those, 5 are in contact with mental health services—and 4 of those 5 (80%) are assessed as ‘low’ or ‘no’ risk at their last contact.
This didn’t feel like a review and let’s keep going with what we currently do but more a - call to rethink how we assess and understand risk.
📚 A recent article in the BABCP journal explores the role of suicidal mental imagery and experiential avoidance in suicidality. The findings are interesting:
🔍 Individuals who experience frequent suicidal imagery often engage in experiential avoidance—attempts to suppress or escape distressing internal experiences.
🧠 Voluntary suicidal imagery (imagery people actively engage with) was a stronger predictor of suicidality than involuntary imagery.
🚫 Avoidance didn’t buffer the impact of imagery—it may even intensify distress by preventing emotional processing.
This suggests that asking about mental imagery—what people see in their minds when they’re struggling—could be key to more accurately recognising su***de risk. Imagery is emotionally potent, persistent, and often overlooked in clinical conversations.
💬 It’s time to expand the conversation.
To ask differently.
To listen more deeply.
📖 Read the full study on Cambridge Core
🖼️ Visuals to support awareness will appear below this post.
***dePrevention
