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