Details

Edition

3rd ed.

Description

1 online resource (xix, 382 pages)

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

The knowledge base -- Legal perspectives -- The assessment of elevated risk -- Outpatient management and treatment of the suicidal patient -- Inpatient management and treatment of the suicidal patient -- Risk management: prevention and postvention.

Summary

"This book has tremendous value for three audiences embroiled in or potentially subject to these kinds of courtroom disputes: mental health professionals who evaluate and treat persons at risk for suicidal behavior, institutions (clinics, hospitals, jails, prisons) that manage suicide risk, and attorneys in suicide-related disputes. The contents of this book address the nexus of (a) U.S. laws bearing on culpability for suicidal behavior, (b) the standards of care for various health professionals and institutions that assess or treat suicidal patients, and (c) the empirical knowledge that does or does not exist about predicting suicidal behavior and managing suicide risk. You may pick up this book to learn what the health and corrections fields themselves expect their workers to know and do in the face of suicide risk; to interpret the related expectations, duties, responsibilities, and standards of care; to formulate the "crimes of commission and omission" (Murphy, 1975a, 1975b) that a health professional or institution would be wise to avoid; or to understand how U.S. court findings have parsed responsibility for suicidal deaths. It is no coincidence that the first edition of this book was published in 1991 at a time when empirical study of suicidal behavior was advancing from adolescence into early adulthood. The first empirical clinical studies of suicidal behavior, the community-based "psychological autopsy" studies of completed suicide by Robins and colleagues conducted in St. Louis during the 1950s (Robins, Gassner, Kayes, Wilkinson, & Murphy, 1959; Robins, Murphy, Wilkinson, Gassner, & Kayes, 1959), began a process of testing handed-down clinical wisdom and revealing its folklore like qualities. Since that time, a substantial body of well-designed, well-controlled studies-reviewed thoughtfully in this book-have continued to challenge the chestnuts of "clinical experience" and "received wisdom" and have turned many truisms on their heads. For example, we now know that at least half of those who die by suicide had never made a previous attempt. Death by suicide is rare unless a major psychiatric disorder is one contributing factor. Persons under the most severe life stress, defined objectively or subjectively, are not the ones at greatest risk for suicide, when analysis controls for the most significant risk factors. In the one large-enough prospective study of completed suicide, expert assessment of suicidal thoughts or plans did not distinguish between depressed inpatients who killed themselves soon afterward and those who lived on. Some clinicians, institutions, attorneys, and expert witnesses have not yet crossed the watershed separating untested wisdom and personal experience from the modern empirically based clinical standards for assessing and managing suicide risk, as reviewed in this book. The single-case psychological autopsy, for example, is a shibboleth based on the idea that an expert with unique experiences can divine the "inner truth" of a decedent and the circumstances of his or her death. This book poses the meaningful alternative: the possibility of a dispassionate, penetrating "root cause analysis" based on scientific evidence. For decades, suicide has been and continues to be the 11th leading cause of death in the United States. Suicide is uncomfortable to talk about, and many prefer to sweep the topic under the rug; but suicide remains a serious public health problem. This third edition of The Suicidal Patient by Bruce Bongar and Glenn Sullivan will prove to be an essential and vital resource for clinicians, supervisors, attorney, and clinicians in training"--Foreword. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Note

GMD: electronic resource.

Subject

Suicidal behavior.

Suicidal behavior -- Treatment.

Forensic psychiatry.

Defensive medicine.

Suicide.

Forensic Psychiatry.

Defensive medicine.

Forensic psychiatry.

Suicidal behavior.

Suicidal behavior -- Treatment.

Added Author

Sullivan, Glenn, 1968-

Other Form:

Original (DLC) 2012047610