I meant more immediate warning signs, like giving away personal possessions or sudden happiness. When my friend killed himself, it both was and wasn’t a surpri

I meant more immediate warning signs, like giving away personal possessions or sudden happiness. When my friend killed himself, it both was and wasn’t a surprise. On one hand, he had a whole host of risk factors that everyone knew about. In the other hand, he’d gotten therapy and meds and seemed to be doing much better. His texts seemed normal. I’d even taken a training called “mental health first aid” - I knew that if I saw any signs I should ask him directly if he was thinking of suicide. If there had been a magical way to know that he was in a period of high risk, there are a million things that could have been done besides in-patient. As one example, he had many friends who would have been by his side 24/7 (as had been done when we knew he wasn’t doing well). I’m extremely skeptical that a technology like this could have worked and detected what was going on with him. I’m even more skeptical that the military would use it in an appropriate way. But still, I do see a glimmer of hope in it. Of course, the obvious solution and the one that should be higher on everyone’s priority list is to simply stop sending soldiers into wars, stop letting parents get away with beating the shit out of their kids, and stop covering up rape. Unfortunately the mind reading machine is probably more likely to actually get done. Just to add, I hear what you’re saying about how the hard part is preventing suicide more so than identifying risk. That lines up with what I’ve seen. I don’t think that negates the need to work on both problems.