In 2001, researchers at the University of Houston studied 153 people who survived a suicide attempt. They found that 87 percent of these individuals thought about suicide for fewer than eight hours before acting. For 70 percent, their suicide attempt occurred within one hour of making the decision. Even more astonishing, 24 percent said that they attempted suicide within five minutes of deciding to kill themselves.[1] In other words, the interval between the time when they thought about suicide and subsequently acted on it was only an hour for most members of the group, and for one out of four people almost no time elapsed between the impulse to kill themselves and the attempt.
Researchers in Australia interviewed people in an emergency room shortly after they had been admitted following a suicide attempt, and reached a similar conclusion. Half the people said that they thought about killing themselves for no more than 10 minutes before acting, and another 16 percent said that the time period was under 30 minutes.[2]
Studies like these lend credence to the belief that suicide is impulsive, but they have flaws. First, they are based on self-reports, which often are unreliable. If a person’s judgment is impaired because of a mental disorder, alcohol, drugs, intense psychological pain, or even a lack of sleep, being able to describe accurately what he or she was thinking or feeling in the moment isn’t always possible. In the Australian study, 29 percent of participants said that they had been drinking at the time of their attempt, and nearly everyone in this subgroup—93 percent—reported a maximum of 10 minutes between the time that they thought about killing themselves and the time that they acted on it.
Second, researchers didn’t delve into participants’ pasts to find out if they had contemplated suicide before. An attempt that might have seemed like a spur-of-the moment decision could have been the result of days, weeks, months, or even years of suicidal ideation and tentative planning.
In literature there are numerous instances of fictional characters who kill themselves in an impetuous manner, with Anna Karenina throwing herself under the wheels of a train being the prime example. As Thomas Joiner and other suicide researchers have pointed out, however, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, and other writers use impulsivity for narrative effect in describing suicides, but that doesn’t make literary suicides an accurate model.
“This is simply not how it works in the real world,” Joiner says, “else there would be millions more suicides per year as people glance at knives and trains and the like.”[3]
For some people—mainly adolescents—suicide can be impulsive,[4] but most individuals plan their deaths. They procure the means, decide on a date and location, then put their plan into action.
“The idea that suicidal acts come out of the blue undermines the attempts to study, assess, treat, and prevent them,” Joiner says. “Suicide is tractable, and we owe it to the memories of those who have died already and to those who are at risk in the future to make it more so.”[5]
If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, seek help immediately. For help 24/7 dial 988 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
