Dual Risk: Where Domestic Abuse and Suicide Collide

Most professionals working in domestic abuse have had training.

Most professionals working in mental health and suicide prevention have had training.

But very few have had training in both arenas – and that gap is costing lives.

For the second year running, suspected victim suicides have outnumbered intimate partner homicides. Their deaths do not necessarily appear in the domestic homicide figures, in fact some suicides will not even be investigated and the cause discovered.  But make no mistake – the abuse killed them. Coercive control does not just put someone in physical danger. It can destroy the will to live from the inside too – hence Dual Risk. The victim is at risk from the perpetrator AND themselves.

Then there is the other person in the room. Perpetrators use suicide threats as tools of control. “If you leave, I’ll kill myself” is not always a cry for help – it is a method, and without understanding coercive control, professionals can become, entirely unwittingly, part of the mechanism that traps her. Suicidality in perpetrators also increases the risk to the victim – again not commonly known or understood, even if there is a box to tick on the DASH form.

Hence Dual Risk. Two people. Two very different relationships to suicide. One professional sitting in front of them who has probably only been trained to see half the picture.

And make no mistake,  at least 40% of domestic abuse victims are men, and everything above applies to them too – when suicidal thoughts come calling, nobody is immune.

If you commission, manage, or deliver training in domestic abuse, mental health, housing, or social care, this is the gap I want to talk to you about.

Thursday 19th March at 12:30pm, I’m running a free Lunch and Learn webinar: Why Didn’t She Just Leave? It’s a good place to start.

Silence kills.