The Assessment and Management of Suicidality

Suicide risk assessment has become a routine task among clinicians working in outpatient settings. As inpatient alternatives have slowly dwindled and lengths of stay have decreased dramatically over the past two decades, it has become increasingly important that mental health practitioners be well informed about, and comfortable with, assessing suicide risk and managing those at-risk in outpatient settings.

There is little doubt that those in clinical practice will see suicidal patients even if they are not identified as working in the specialty area. It is difficult, if not impossible, to tightly control the patient flow so as to prevent these individuals from appearing through routine referral channels. Since the author had yet to find a brief, thorough, and easily accessible clinical guide to suicide risk assessment, one that clinicians of all stripes could review in a short time frame, he wrote this book to fill that gap in the literature.