Preventing Patient Suicide

Today's psychiatrists practice in an environment that poses
difficult challenges. Both treatment time and duration are limited by
insurance requirements; many facilities are understaffed; split treatment
arrangements are typical; and high-risk, acutely suicidal patients are
admitted to inpatient units for short lengths of stay. In addition, law now
plays a pervasive role in the practice of psychiatry. The doctor-patient
relationship is no longer defined solely by the involved parties. Clinicians
must juggle these requirements and limitations while providing the very best
care to their patients, especially those at high risk.

Preventing
Patient Suicide: Clinical Assessment and Management provides the
wisdom of Dr. Robert I. Simon's vast clinical experience, combined with the
latest insights from the evidence-based psychiatric literature, to offer a
cutting-edge survey of suicide prevention and management techniques. The author:


* Addresses sudden improvement in high-risk suicidal patients, a
phenomenon both common and perilous, with techniques for determining whether
the improvement is real or feigned.
* Explores in depth the misuse of
suicide risk assessment forms, with emphasis on their inherent
limitations.
* Examines the many entrenched myths and traditions about
suicide, exposing them to the critical light of evidence-based medicine,
including the concept of "imminent suicide risk" and the myth of "passive
suicide ideation".
* Discusses the continuum of chronic and acute
high-risk suicidal patients, the fluidity with which one can become the
other, and the difficulty in assessing these patients.
* Explores how
the law and psychiatry interact in frequently occurring clinical situations,
and the importance of therapeutic risk management.

In addition, the
book contains a variety of features that illuminate the subject and enhance
the reader's understanding, including:


* Inclusion of illustrative case studies, combined with commentary on
commonly occurring but complex clinical situations.
* Key points at the
end of each chapter that identify critical information.
* A Suicide
Risk Assessment Self-Test, a teaching instrument that consists of fifty
questions designed to enhance clinician suicide risk assessment by
incorporating evidence-based risk and protective factors.

Dr. Simon
provides a nuanced, empathic, yet pragmatic perspective on identifying,
assessing, and managing the suicidal patient while successfully navigating a
complex legal and clinical environment that poses its own risks to the
practitioner.