Signs of suicide are commonly used in suicide intervention training to assist the\nidentification of those at imminent risk for suicide. Signs of suicide may be particularly important\nto telephone crisis-line workers (TCWs), who have little background information to identify the\npresence of suicidality if the caller is unable or unwilling to express suicidal intent. Although signs of\nsuicide are argued to be only meaningful as a pattern, there is a paucity of research that has examined\nwhether TCWs use patterns of signs to decide whether a caller might be suicidal, and whether\nthese are influenced by caller characteristics such as gender. The current study explored both\npossibilities. Data were collected using an online self-report survey in a Australian sample of\n137 TCWs. Exploratory factor analysis uncovered three patterns of suicide signs that TCWs may\nuse to identify if a caller might be at risk for suicide (mood, hopelessness, and anger), which were\nqualitatively different for male and female callers. These findings suggest that TCWs may recognise\nspecific patterns of signs to identify suicide risk, which appear to be influenced to some extent by the\ncallers� inferred gender. Implications for the training of telephone crisis workers and others including\nmental-health and medical professionals, as well as and future research in suicide prevention\nare discussed.
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