I don't have the numbers at hand, but I've heard of a study saying that suicide very often is a very impulsive action. Saying that in most cases there's less th

I don't have the numbers at hand, but I've heard of a study saying that suicide very often is a very impulsive action. Saying that in most cases there's less than an hour between deciding to commit suicide and the action itself (numbers might be off here). Looks like I got it from a Freakonomics podcast [1]: "One academic study looked at attempted suicides in Houston among 15 to 34 year olds. It found that in 70 percent of the cases, the time between deciding to commit suicide and taking action was under an hour. Seventy-percent of the cases. For about one-quarter of the people involved, the time gap was five minutes or less." Of course, from this it doesn't follow that a hotline it necessarily effective. Luckily britta already posted links to some studies. [1] http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/06/21/the-suicide-paradox-full-transcript/ http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/06/21/the-suicide-paradox-f...