Suicide: a concept analysis

Background: Suicide is a national and global phenomenon with its rate increasing every year inspite of clinicians, policy makers and researchers grappling with suicide prevention and investing heavily in risk assessment, prevention and reduction. There seems to be a gap in the understanding of suicide and its associated behaviours. Aim: The aim of this review was to undertake a concept analysis of suicide and behaviour. Method: The Walker and Avant eight-step method was adopted. Search engines including Academic Search Elite, CINAHL, Ovid Online embracing Embase and Ovid Medline were utilised to access articles published in the last 10 years, written in English, with abstracts and full text. Results: The concept of suicide require understanding of implicity and explicity of suicidal intent and how these relate to suicide behaviour. Areas of risk assessment such as thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness should be considered. Associated with suicide are internal and external hazards, which tend to create vulnerability leading to suicidal behaviour. Clinicians should differentiate between suicide in the presence of mental illness and when there is a predicament. Risk assessment tools should not be taken as absolute as they do not provide 100 % detection of intent. Conclusion: Understanding the concept of suicide would help clinicians comprehend their patients and suicidal behaviour and improve intervention methods