neitherherenorthere
Experienced
- Apr 22, 2020
- 223
I have a thing for trying to quantify my feelings to some objective standard because it reassures me that my symptoms and feelings are real and valid. Whenever I feel like my depression is getting a bit better I rush to take every depression rating scale I know of to make sure I'm still officially severely depressed (even though self-assessments are flawed, blah blah blah). In the same vein, I want to quantify my suicidal thoughts on some kind of scale, but I've never found a rating system I've been happy with. Nothing matches my experience, and clinical assessments like the C-SSRS are totally useless.
I did a search on the forum specifically for anything on Emmengard's scale because I know that's a very popular rating system and I wanted to see other people's opinions on it. When I first discovered it I liked it because it was the first time I'd seen someone try to meaningfully convey different levels of suicidality (and it has illustrations!), but it doesn't line up with how I experience suicidality. I've also found Natasha Tracy's suicidal self-assessment, but that doesn't fit me either. Those are really the only two things that I've found that have put themselves out there as finalized personal rating scales for people to use that weren't developed for clinical/crisis settings.
There's an ongoing "how suicidal are you today" thread here, which just asks where you are from 1 (least suicidal) to 10 (most suicidal). This is useful is a somewhat different way because there are no definitions provided for what anything between 1 and 10 means, so the scale is completely subjective to the individual and therefore is accurate to their personal experience of suicidality. But this only communicates the relative degree of severity of someone's suicidal ideation, not the specific thoughts they're having or any actions they're taking.
I've been thinking about what a scale designed specifically for me would look like for a while but never bothered to properly work anything out. Everyone's experience is different which means my scale wouldn't necessarily work for anyone else, so I'm curious to know what other people's scales would include.
TL;DR, if you made your own suicidality rating scale tailored specifically for you, what would it look like?
I did a search on the forum specifically for anything on Emmengard's scale because I know that's a very popular rating system and I wanted to see other people's opinions on it. When I first discovered it I liked it because it was the first time I'd seen someone try to meaningfully convey different levels of suicidality (and it has illustrations!), but it doesn't line up with how I experience suicidality. I've also found Natasha Tracy's suicidal self-assessment, but that doesn't fit me either. Those are really the only two things that I've found that have put themselves out there as finalized personal rating scales for people to use that weren't developed for clinical/crisis settings.
There's an ongoing "how suicidal are you today" thread here, which just asks where you are from 1 (least suicidal) to 10 (most suicidal). This is useful is a somewhat different way because there are no definitions provided for what anything between 1 and 10 means, so the scale is completely subjective to the individual and therefore is accurate to their personal experience of suicidality. But this only communicates the relative degree of severity of someone's suicidal ideation, not the specific thoughts they're having or any actions they're taking.
I've been thinking about what a scale designed specifically for me would look like for a while but never bothered to properly work anything out. Everyone's experience is different which means my scale wouldn't necessarily work for anyone else, so I'm curious to know what other people's scales would include.
TL;DR, if you made your own suicidality rating scale tailored specifically for you, what would it look like?
