If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call 911, go to the nearest emergency room, text Help to 741741, or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to reach a 24-hour crisis support. 

Enhance Life Skills and Resilience

By helping people build life skills, such as critical thinking, stress management, and coping, you can prepare them to safely address challenges such as economic stress, divorce, physical illness, and aging. Resilience—the ability to cope with adversity and adapt to change—is a protective factor against suicide risk. While it has some overlap with life skills, resilience also encompasses other attributes such as optimism, positive self-concept, and the ability to remain hopeful. Skills training, mobile apps, and self-help materials are examples of ways to increase life skills and build resilience.

Life skills are a key protective factor for suicide and include critical thinking, stress management, conflict resolution, problem-solving, and coping skills. Activities that enhance these skills can help people as they face new challenges, such as economic stress, divorce, physical illness, and aging.

Resilience is a related concept that includes traits such as a positive self-concept and optimism in addition to life skills. It is sometimes described as the ability to adapt to stress and adversity.

Building life skills and resilience is just one component of a comprehensive approach to suicide prevention.

Take Action

  • Sponsor workshops that teach mindfulness and stress reduction skills.
  • Provide information about self-help tools and apps that promote coping.
  • Identify common stressors affecting your target population (e.g., financial problems, relationship issues) and offer skill-building workshops designed to prevent or minimize their occurrence.
  • Create an institutional culture that promotes and encourages qualities such as empathy, optimism, and forgiveness.
  • Implement life skills and classroom behavior management curricula.
  • Provide resources and information to help people cope with life transitions.

Engaging in a systematic strategic planning process, including an assessment of needs related to life skills and resilience, is important to help focus and tailor your plan.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, please call 911, go to the nearest emergency room, text Help to 741741, or call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to reach a 24-hour crisis support.