A suicidal person is one who is experiencing a personal suicide crisis

Suicide crisis

A suicide crisis, suicidal crisis, or potential suicide, is a situation in which a person is attempting to kill him or herself or is seriously contemplating or planning to do so...

; that is, he or she is attempting suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

, is seeking a means to commit suicide, or is contemplating suicide

Suicidal ideation

Suicidal ideation is a common medical term for thoughts about suicide, which may be as detailed as a formulated plan, without the suicidal act itself. Although most people who undergo suicidal ideation do not commit suicide, some go on to make suicide attempts...

.

Recognizing a suicidal person

A suicidal person may exhibit certain behaviors. A person who has a preoccupation with death, talks excessively about suicide, or becomes socially withdrawn may be contemplating suicide. Other behaviors in suicidal people include reckless behaviors (such as increased drug and alcohol use, or taking unnecessary risks like dangerous driving), unexpected or unusual farewells to family and friends, and seeking out means to kill themselves (such as acquiring pills, guns, or other lethal objects).

Causes

See Discussion on causes of suicide for more information.

In many cases, suicide is an attempt to escape a situation that causes unbearable suffering. A majority of those that commit suicide suffer from depression

Clinical depression

Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...

, alcoholism

Alcoholism

Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...

, or mental health

Mental illness

A mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern generally associated with subjective distress or disability that occurs in an individual, and which is not a part of normal development or culture. Such a disorder may consist of a combination of affective, behavioural,...

 problems such as bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder or bipolar affective disorder, historically known as manic–depressive disorder, is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated energy levels, cognition, and mood with or without one or...

. Some that commit suicide have organic disorders such as brain trauma

Acquired brain injury

An acquired brain injury is brain damage caused by events after birth, rather than as part of a genetic or congenital disorder such as fetal alcohol syndrome, perinatal illness or perinatal hypoxia. ABI can result in cognitive, physical, emotional, or behavioural impairments that lead to permanent...

 and epilepsy

Epilepsy

Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.About 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and nearly two out of every three new cases...

.

Legal

For much of history, people that attempted suicide were seen as violating laws against murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

. By the eleventh century, courts "regarded suicide as 'murder of oneself'" and was "therefore viewed...as a criminal act." These legal repercussions for suicide have existed until modern times. England had laws against suicide until 1961, and between 1946 and 1956 "over 5,000 [people] were found guilty [of attempting suicide] and sentenced to either jail or prison." The United States too had laws against suicide as late as 1964, and Islamic holy law also forbids suicide.

Other factors

Other factors that influence suicidal people are families with a history of suicide and cultural or religious beliefs that glorify suicide.