(PS11-47) Exploring the Decision to a Abort Suicide Attempt: A Qualitative Study

Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide. Aborted suicide attempts, operationalized as when an individual begins to take direct action towards killing themselves but independently chooses not to attempt suicide, are an understudied yet clinically significant manifestation of suicidal urge and intent. Individuals receiving psychiatric inpatient care commonly report prior aborted suicide attempts and retrospectively recount similar levels of suicidal intent in both aborted and actual suicide attempts. Aborted attempts also co-occur with actual attempts in community samples, with one study reporting that 71% of people who reported a prior suicide attempt also reported a prior aborted suicide attempt. Prior research on aborted attempts has been limited to studies on their frequency, and as a first step towards understanding this important behavior, the basic, subjective nature of aborted suicide attempts must be explored. In this study, we use online advertisements to recruit adults who have aborted a suicide attempt at any point in their life. Study participants complete virtual, semi-structured interviews that explore their experience of aborting a suicide attempt. We plan to complete data collection by mid-July and will have interviewed, at minimum, 7 study participants. We will utilize a grounded theory approach to analyze qualitative data in NVivo. Results presented in this abstract will characterize the reasons that study participants identified as relevant to their decision to abort their suicide attempt. We will discuss the relevance of these findings for future work aiming to explore aborted suicide attempts and develop interventions for suicide.