The primary goals of this study were to identify risk factors for 12-month suicide attempts and to use this information to develop a clinically useful method of predicting suicide attempts that addresses many of the limitations noted in prior work on this problem. Data are from the World Health Organization (WHO) World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative, the size and scope of which provide a unique opportunity to carefully examine this low base-rate behavior. We report here on the 12-month prevalence of suicide ideation, plans, and attempts across these countries, and on the risk factors for 12-month suicide attempts among those with suicide ideation. We use a data-driven actuarial approach similar to that used successfully to develop prediction models for violent behavior29–33 and most recently to predict 12-month suicide attempts among US respondents.34 As in that earlier work, our goal was to develop a risk index that clinicians can use to quickly and easily assess the risk of 12-month suicide attempts. The use of such risk indices has the additional advantage of estimating risk without asking directly about the behavior
