A Survey of the Characteristics of Suiciding Callers to a Suicide Prevention Center

This report discusses a study in which suicides reported by the King County, Washington coroner in 1978-1979 were compared with callers to the Crisis Clinic, Inc. to determine the number of suicides among those callers within one year of contact with the crisis service. Of a total of 344 King County deaths by suicide, seven were found to correlate with callers. Those callers who died by suicide were younger & female, in contrast to all of King County suicides, the population of King County in general, & to clients of the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center as reported in 1970. Two of the seven suicides were from the chronic caller population.