Suicide risk assessment

Suicide risk assessment is a clinical process for evaluating suicidal thoughts, intent, plans, access to means, and protective factors to guide care and safety planning.

Suicidal ideation: Thoughts about suicide, ranging from passive wishes to die to active consideration of suicide. Directly characterizing these thoughts clarifies their frequency, persistence, and immediacy.
Safety planning: A collaborative, written plan for coping with suicidal crises and reaching support. Assessment findings identify warning signs, coping steps, and contacts for the plan.
Suicide risk scales: Questionnaires or rating tools that standardize questions or estimate aspects of suicide risk. Scales can support inquiry, but cannot replace individualized clinical judgment.
Involuntary commitment: Legal detention for psychiatric evaluation or treatment without a person's consent under specified conditions. Risk judgments can contribute to coercive decisions with major consequences for autonomy.
Suicide intent: A person's degree of intention to act on suicidal thoughts. Intent helps distinguish thoughts from a current likelihood of attempting suicide.
Crisis intervention: Short-term actions that address an acute psychological crisis and reduce immediate danger. Imminent risk may require rapid support and stabilization.
Suicide prediction: The attempt to forecast whether or when an individual will die by suicide. Assessment guides care under uncertainty; it cannot reliably predict an individual outcome.
Confidentiality in mental health care: The ethical and legal protection of private information shared in mental health treatment. Serious and immediate danger can affect when confidentiality may be limited.
Suicide plan: A contemplated method, time, or place for a suicide attempt. Specificity and feasibility of a plan shape immediate safety decisions.
Psychiatric hospitalization: Inpatient psychiatric care for people whose needs cannot be safely met in a less restrictive setting. Assessment contributes to decisions about whether inpatient care is necessary.

Linked from 16 pages