Suicide Resistance
At SecuringHospitals.com, our primary focus is to provide Suicide Resistant (SR) products to facilities which accommodate individuals at risk of attempting suicide or other forms of self-harm.SR products have design characteristics which are inherently resistant to; ligature, contraband/weapon creation, and typically vandalism.
A product which is ligature resistant is designed to make it as difficult as possible to tie material (eg, cord/wire , fabric, string) to the product, without sacrificing the functionality of the product. For some products, this can be particularly challenging. Anti-ligature products typically have sloped tops, and often sloped sides and bottoms. Also, any openings in the product would be oriented in a way that string or wire could not pass back out through another opening, or snag onto an internal feature. Ligature resistance is of particular importance for products firmly attached to floors, walls, ceilings, and doors. In the case of unfixed items (eg clothing, personal care items) it is important that these items be unlikely to assist ligature to fixed surfaces.
A product which is resistant to contraband is designed in such a way to make it difficult to hide banned materials, and even more importantly, to resist being modified in such a way as to create a banned object. An example of this would be using shatter resistant materials so that edged weapons could not be created from shards. Another example would be breakaway curtains where the tracks are securely fixed to the ceilings or walls, rather than systems with releasable curtain rods which can be used as weapons.
The vast majority of SR products are vandal resistant, however not all vandal resistant products are suicide resistant. In the case of our SR products which are not vandal resistant (eg. Breathable Trash Can Liners), the consequences of their vandalism are inconsequential in terms of risk and cost.
Products that we have identified as being suicide resistant incorporated the acronym "SR” into the product name and are also identified with the following icon on the product page.
