If you live with suicidal thoughts on a regular basis, you can never know when you might suddenly get the urge to act on them. Even if you have made the decision that you want to live, a negative thought or an external stressor could heighten the risk of acting on your suicidal urges.

The most immediate action to take to stay safe is to remove means of harming yourself that may be in your house or other areas you frequent. Once you have done that, I encourage you to establish a specific set of coping strategies and actions that you can turn to if a crisis arises.

Having these actions in place is especially important because suicidal crises can come and go very quickly. Applying these strategies will help you to “ride out” a suicidal urge until it passes, and ensure that you don’t make a sudden and impulsive decision that would jeopardize your survival.

Below you will find a number of different strategies that you can use to keep yourself safe: