Let's assume that the 90% statistic is right. That certainly seems to lessen the burden on families of suicidal people, but at what cost? This number doesn't te

Let's assume that the 90% statistic is right. That certainly seems to lessen the burden on families of suicidal people, but at what cost? This number doesn't tell us about the reason those people never attempted again. We all hear about the gruesomeness of deaths by suicide and the impact on relationships with family and friends. It is very likely that the toll an unsuccessful attempt takes on someone combined with observing the attempt fail makes people reconsider suicide as a solution to their problems. It is not likely that this correlates with resolving their problems in another way. If the problems are hard enough to solve or to live with, the total burden on everyone involved could be much higher after an unsuccessful attempt than after a successful one. Suicide prevention success should not be solely measured by suicide statistics, or by the mental health of family members. I think your idea is going in the right direction, which is to avoid thinking of suicide as the worst possible outcome, to consider the impact the worst living situations have compared to the cost of escaping them, and to potentially try to minimise both.