Abstract

  When faced with a patient who may have suicide ideas or plans, clinicians usually perform a suicide risk assessment. However, short-term suicide prediction is a virtually impossible task. Suicidal individuals often deny suicidal plans, even when the issue is addressed directly by the clinician. An important aspect of the communication problem between patient and clinician is that the traditional medical model of suicide does not match with the inner experience of the suicidal patient. Here, it is argued that suicide risk assessment must be a collaborative process, in which patient and clinician together explore the individual’s actual suicide risk and jointly develop adequate measures to keep the patient safe.

Keywords: Suicide; Risk Assessment; Narrative

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Citation

Citation: Konrad Michel. “Suicide Risk Assessment Must be Collaborative". Acta Scientific Medical Sciences 4.12 (2020): 38-43.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Konrad Michel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.