by Shawn Christopher Shea
Reviewed by Rajnish (“Raj”) Mago, MD
Clinical assessment of the risk of suicide is definitely, as the title of this book states, a “practical art.” And this book truly lives up to its title. It is not a review of the published research on suicide, its epidemiology, neurobiology, and so on. It is a practical guide to this art, crucially important but challenging, in which we must continually strive to improve our skills. That is why this book will be helpful to all clinicians who need to assess suicide risk, regardless of their level of experience.
For our interview with Dr. Shea, in which he shares so many practical tips about skillfully interviewing patients, including for assessing the risk of suicide, please see the following article on this website:
Psychiatric Interviewing: Interview with Shawn Christopher Shea, MD
Just to give you an idea of the content of this book, here are only a few of the many topics on which Dr. Shea provides practical tips:
– How to become aware of and be mindful of our own conscious or subconscious beliefs about suicide, so that they don’t seriously interfere with our assessment of suicide risk in persons we evaluate (Chapter 4).
– Several interviewing techniques that should also be applied to suicide risk assessment, for “enhancing engagement while peeling away distortions.” These include Behavioral Incident, Shame Attenuation, Gentle Assumption, Symptom Amplification, Denial of the Specific, and Normalization (Chapter 5).
– Effectively eliciting suicidal ideation by first setting the stage for the inquiry and then using the CASE approach developed by the author (Chapter 6)
– Tips on safe and effective decision-making, including in specific clinical scenarios, for example, persons unknown to the interviewer and those in ongoing treatment with the interviewer; persons exhibiting mature defenses or those with severe personality disorder; and so on (Chapter 7).
– Several clinical vignettes, each followed by a detailed discussion of how to formulate the case and what to do (Chapter 7).
– How to document a suicide assessment (Appendix A).
Have you read this book? If so, please share your thoughts about it by posting a comment below (under “Leave a Reply”). Please also share which clinical tips in the book you have found particularly helpful.
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Related Pages
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Suicidality: Management
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Miscellaneous
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