Some psychologists believe suicide occurs as an escape from unbearable psychological pain. This pain comes from prolonged frustration in meeting or attaining basic psychological and fundamental human needs or motives such as the need for achievement, esteem, belonging, and safety. The inability to meet these needs leads to such negative emotional states as shame, guilt, anger, and grief. Other psychologists have noticed that baseline levels of hopelessness among individuals serve as a good predictor of suicide attempts. However, because suicide is a low base rate phenomenon, finding good predictors is usually difficult.

Reduced levels of serotonin in the brain have been implicated as a risk factor for suicide. Serotonin is associated with poor impulse control and with the tendency to engage in violent and aggressive behavior, and has been found to exist in deficient levels in individuals who have attempted suicide. Low levels of serotonin are also associated with depressive disorders, and thus is one of the possible explanations of the strong link between suicide and depression. However, studies have shown that the low levels of serotonin are directly linked to suicide; therefore it less likely that people who commit suicide exhibit deficient amounts of serotonin simply because they are depressed. Twin and adoption studies have also pointed to a possible genetic factor associated with suicidal or self-destructive behavior, independent of the risk for developing a mood disorder. This factor may point to an impulsivity scale, suggesting that if a person inherits a predisposition towards impulsive and violent behavior, the risk factor of he or she committing suicide inevitably goes up.

Religious groups with built-in social structures have been shown to play a role in the risk of attempting suicide. Populations affiliated with religions that offer great networks of emotional support, such as Catholicism, generally tend to have lower rates of suicide. Social policies, such as access to gun control, have also been shown to influence rates of suicide completion; since many suicides are acts of impulsivity, restrictions on access to such lethal weapons decrease the chances of fatality. Finally, the media, in its coverage of celebrity deaths by suicide, has been shown to unintentionally encourage suicide. This effect has been labeled "contagious suicide" or forming a suicide cluster, and has been hypothesized to be caused by a reduction in the individual's resistance to committing the act, the need for attention, or a misguided attempt to find identification and connection with the dead celebrity.