Question

during a debriefing,a person jokes about killing themselves. What should you do?

Answer 1

Talking or joking about suicide during any debriefing session should be taken lightly at all. Such thoughts are very sensitive and must be taken care of as early as possible. If I come across any such case, the first thing I will do is to ask them certain questions about how things are going on with them at that period of time or what made them think about suicide. I will also try to find out if they have access to any such life taking stuff like a gun or sleeping pills. Talking to people and sharing inner thoughts helps in reducing the risk of suicide and individual with such feelings inside them may get pass such pain. My next step would be to understand the person, their hobbies, past experience, family circumstances and financial state. Too much drinking habit or self-harm experience in the past can be a red flag. Such people should not be left alone even if they say that they are joking. Calling a family member or a close friend to look after them all the time can be a good idea. I will try to get most of the information from them carefully and definitely keeping them to myself would not be a good idea. I will ask them to take some more debriefing session since the core objective of such sessions are nothing but to encourage and improve individual thoughts for better future. I will also try to persuade them for seeing some trained professional and therapy sessions too. In fact, government has also provided some suicidal hotline numbers. I will encourage them to keep it handy.