Collection: Suicide Assessment: Approaches and Tools

How do we, as mental health professionals, accurately assess whether someone is suicidal or not? The stakes are high when we consider that 80% of people dying by suicide had health care visits in the prior 12 months. This collection includes courses and protocols that will improve health professionals’ skill at recognising the tragic state of suicidality. Several courses note the emergent consensus among experts that collaborative assessment – that is, between the health professional and the suicidal person – is an evidence-based approach. The course on Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS), with its Suicide Status Form, is a prime example of this. Another course examines collaborative assessment, too, and additionally outlines the “highest value” tools, including safety planning, lethal means reduction, and caring contacts. Individuals’ desire to end their lives fluctuates according to both long-term risk factors (such as a traumatic early life) and also acute triggers (such as financial problems); the course explaining the STARS (Screening Tool for Assessing Risk of Suicide) takes both of these into account. Finally, our perspectives and thinking about suicide have changed over time; the course that demonstrates how to conduct a “state of the science assessment interview” details both historical and contemporary perspectives as well as looking at the general protocol components of suicide assessment.