MEASURES
The questions about suicide ideation, plans, and attempts are part of the life-event history section of the NCS interview. Separate questions were asked about the lifetime occurrence of suicide ideation ("Have you ever seriously thought about committing suicide?"), suicide plans ("Have you ever made a plan for committing suicide?"), and suicide attempts ("Have you ever attempted suicide?"). For each of these outcomes, information was obtained about age at first occurrence and the recency of occurrence. Lethality of intent was assessed by reading 3 statements and asking attempters to select 1 of the 3 to describe their first attempt. The first statement was "I made a serious attempt to kill myself and it was only luck that I did not succeed." The second statement was "I tried to kill myself, but I knew the method was not foolproof." The third statement was "My attempt was a cry for help; I did not want to die.