Assessing Your Current Safety Level
The Safety Checklist
Before you move on to the next section of this chapter Creating Your Plan for SAFETY FIRST! we suggest that you take some time with the two self-assessment scales: the Safety Checklist and the Suicide/Harmful Behavior Checklist. These will help you determine your current level of safety. After each checklist and the scoring information, there are some recommendations which are designed to help you determine whether you are ready to progress with a recovery program.

Safety Checklist
Check "Yes" or "No" to answer each question:
1. Do you have impulses to harm yourself? Yes  No
2. Do you find yourself in unsafe situations? Yes  No
3. Do you easily feel overwhelmed by feelings, thoughts, memories or bodily sensations? Yes  No
4. Do you currently feel threatened by someone close to you? Yes  No
5. Have you ever attempted suicide? Yes  No
6. Have you ever "lost time" or lost sense of
being yourself?		 Yes  No
7. Do you use alcohol or drugs to excess? Yes  No
8. Is there a firearm or other potentially dangerous weapon at your residence? Yes  No
9. Have you been victimized by someone within the last three years? Yes  No
10. Is someone close to you involved in illegal activities? Yes  No
SCORING: If you checked "YES" to more than three questions, your current risk level is HIGH.

Print this checklist if you need your answers for reference. Your entries will be cleared once you leave this page.
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RECOMMENDATIONS: Let this checklist tell you what you must do to lower your risk level and create more safety in your life. Some of the situations, such as that posed in question eight, concerning firearms or dangerous weapons, can be resolved easily: remove the firearm or weapon from your residence. With other situations, such as past victimization (question nine), there is little you can do except to make every effort to prevent a recurrence. In most of the other questions, the issues are somewhat complicated but not unsolvable. You can (and should) seek professional help if you lose sense of time or of your self or have impulses to harm yourself. If you are being threatened or abused by someone close to you, you need to take steps to protect yourself and to make the threats or abuse stop — even if this means ending the relationship. If you are unsure as to how to address any of these questions, then you may need help to figure out how to create SAFETY FIRST!

Go to Suicide/Harmful Behavior Checklist

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Survivor to Thriver, Page 17
© 2007 THE MORRIS CENTER, Revised 11/06