Kimbrel NA, Beckham JC, Calhoun PS, et al. - Researchers developed and validated the Durham Risk Score or DRS as a promising new tool that could aid in improving clinicians’ ability to recognize individuals at risk for attempting suicide.

• Three prospective cohort studies from the US (total sample size = 35,654 participants), including a large general population study and 2 smaller veteran cohorts, were used to develop and validate DRS.

• In both the combined development (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.91) and validation (AUC = 0.92) cohorts, strong predictive value of the risk score for future suicide attempts was recorded.

• In addition, individuals in the top 15% of risk scores had occurrence of 82% of prospective suicide attempts, whereas individuals scoring in the top 1% of risk scores had occurrence of 27% of the attempts.

• Further, good performance of the risk score was observed among important subgroups, including women, men, Black, White, Hispanic, veterans, lower-income individuals, younger adults, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) individuals.