The Harvard Medical School Guide to Suicide Assessment and Intervention

Front Cover
Wiley, 1999 - Medical - 704 pages
This vital resource--edited by Harvard Medical School's DouglasJacobs, a nationally recognized expert on suicide anddepression--is the definitive guide for helping mental healthprofessionals determine the risk for suicide and appropriateinterventions for suicidal or at-risk patients. Created primarilyfor mental health clinicians (with several chapters directed towardprimary care physicians), the book is a hands-on guide for thosewho are often the first line of defense for assessing if a patientor client is suicidal.

Comprehensive in scope, the book offers a wealth of informationabout such useful topics as inpatient and outpatient issues,psychopharmacology, and advice about working with specialpopulations. Most importantly, the book's contributors detaileffective techniques for intervention and offer a model of suicideassessment that focuses on predisposing conditions, potentiatingconditions, and specific suicide inquiries. As a special feature,the book also includes a helpful section on contracts--agreementsmade with the patient not to harm themselves--and useful factsabout the subsequent liability issues. In addition, there is acompelling analysis of the controversial issues surroundingassisted suicide as well as an honest personal account ofsuicidality from a professional who has experienced it for herself.

From inside the book

Contents

An Overview and Recommended Protocol
3
Epidemiology of Suicide
40
A Community Psychiatry Approach to Preventing Suicide
52
Copyright

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