Between 1999 and 2018, the rate of suicide deaths in the United States increased by 35%. Each year, approximately 47,000 Americans die by suicide, which equates to approximately 130 deaths each day. The majority of suicide deaths occur among working age individuals, and statistics show that the number of suicides enacted at work have reached record highs.
As the world continues to battle an ongoing pandemic, more individuals are at risk for experiencing decreased mental health as well as increased suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Now, more than ever, it is critical for organizations to evaluate the role they play in preventing suicide deaths, as well as strategize about ways to aid those considering suicide and effectively support suicide survivors after the death of a coworker.
Workplace Predictors of Suicide
The suicide is a complex phenomenon that is influenced by several intersecting life factors, including individual attributes, environmental conditions, and access to lethal means. As a result, identifying employees at risk for dying by suicide is a complicated process. Our research has shown that one important piece of the puzzle involves employees’ work experiences, including characteristics of the job itself and social interactions with coworkers. Take, for example, the suicide deaths or attempts of 13 employees at the Chinese manufacturing company Foxconn in response to extreme working conditions, or the suicide deaths of 35 employees at the French-based telecommunication company Orange as a result of managerial bullying. These situations underscore the very real and adverse effects that the workplace can have on employees’ psyches and behaviors, which can ultimately result in suicide.
We conducted a review of more than 500 studies related to work and suicide to uncover the work-related factors that predict employees’ suicidal thoughts and behaviors. At the core of the review, we identified social and psychological pain to be the central causes of suicide-related behavior. According to the interpersonal theory of suicide, social pain occurs because individuals are unable to establish meaningful connections with others or perceive themselves to be a burden to others. On the other hand, the psych ache theory of suicide focuses on psychological pain that is akin to mental suffering or extreme anguish. Individuals who experience either type of pain may enact suicide to end their suffering, especially when they perceive their situations as unchanging or hopeless.
Workplaces are inherently social institutions. While they can provide a sense of community, they can also engender feelings of both social pain and psychological pain. Our review of the literature uncovered a multitude of factors that predict suicide-related thoughts and behaviors among employees, including interpersonal relations, work-family conflict, unstable employment, unemployment, burnout, fatigue, job demand, job characteristics and the physical work environment.
As apparent from this varied list, the predictors of suicide are not limited to a single industry or occupation; any job can engender suicidal ideation. Indeed, suicide develops from experiences of social and/or psychological pain, which can develop from detrimental aspects of any workplace. For this reason, all organizations must be cognizant of their influences on employees’ mental well-being, as well as actions they can take to reduce suicides. Additionally, organizations must be prepared to respond to an employee’s suicide death — actions known as convention strategies.
Organizational Prevention Strategies
In light of the relationship between workplace factors and suicide, organizations have an obligation to prevent suicide-related deaths. The Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) is federally funded and uses research to create infrastructures to prevent suicide deaths. The SPRC recommends that organizations can use three primary strategies to proactively address suicide: 1) create a respectful, inclusive work environment, 2) identify employees who may be at risk, and 3) create a plan to respond to take action.
Create a respectful work environment and foster social inclusion.
Social connectedness is essential for fulfilling employees’ belongingness needs and helping them to feel part of the work community. While important for all employees, fostering social connectedness will become increasingly important as more employees engage in telework or work in isolation, both due to the current Covid-19 pandemic and changing technological innovations. Thus, inclusion should be a key component of a workplace suicide prevention program.
Organizations can foster a sense of connectedness by establishing mentoring programs and encouraging team-based work projects that allow employees to share ideas and collaborate to reach goals. Providing opportunities for employees to informally engage with another can also build social bonds and has been shown to predict job satisfaction and affective well-being. In providing such opportunities, it is important for organizations to create workplace social norms that favor respectful communication and behaviors. Research has demonstrated that incivility and bullying are on the rise within workplaces. Such deviant behaviors not only degrade social bonds but also isolate employees at work, therefore making possibly at-risk employees more susceptible to experiencing suicide-related thoughts and behaviors.
Identify employees who may be at risk.
Managers and HR professionals are important gatekeepers for recognizing individuals who are at risk of suicide and aiding those who need help. In addition to workplace specific factors, prior research has identified the following as risk factors of suicide: 1) health conditions such as mental illness, alcohol and substance disorders, as well as major physical illnesses; 2) negative life events including unemployment, job loss, and loss of key relationships; 3) a personal history related to suicide such as a family history of suicide deaths, previous suicide attempts, and a history of trauma or ; and 4) access to lethal means, which includes accessibility to means to enact suicide such as a firearm and other weapons or lethal medications.
Tackling these risk factors may be extremely challenging for leaders, however. Directly asking employees about certain topics may be protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act, such as asking employees to disclose mental illnesses. It is important to refer to continuously managed resources, such as those provided by the Society for Human Resource Management and the Job Accommodation Network, to determine whether it is legal to ask specific questions.
Despite this challenge, it’s important for managers to understand these factors so that they can provide employees with adequate social support and access to resources — even when an employee has not explicitly indicated suicidal intentions. For instance, when organizations undergo restructuring or have to make layoffs, these changes in employment status could contribute to suicidal ideation or behaviors among the affected employees. Thus, an important component of any organizational change or severance package would be access to mental health resources and health care.
Additionally, while a manager is restricted in the types of questions they can ask employees, employees may voluntarily disclose information that would indicate their potential risk for suicide. As an example, a person might reveal that they own a gun. While this information on its own isn’t alarming, it would be important knowledge to have if that employee were to experience a serious negative work event, such as being written-up or passed over for a promotion. In this instance, if a manager felt concerned about the employee’s safety, they could take actions to contact the appropriate individuals.
Keep in mind that, although the factors discussed above are risk factors for suicide, not all employees who meet these criteria will be affected by suicidal thoughts or behaviors. For instance, having a mental illness does make one more vulnerable to dying by suicide, but not all individuals with a mental illness die by suicide. Rather, knowing this information can be vitally important in certain contexts or in the presence of other concerning behaviors.
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