The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Suicide Assessment and Management

Abstract

Reviews the book, The American Psychiatric Publishing Textbook of Suicide Assessment and Management edited by Robert I. Simon and Robert E. Hales (see record [rid]2006-03612-000[/rid]). In the forward, Stuart Yudofsky summarizes the text's objectives as answering the following three Socratic questions for the clinician who suffers a tragic loss of a patient by suicide: What did I miss? What could I have done to have prevented this tragedy? What are the implications of the suicide to me as a professional? The subject matter is organized to answer Yudofsky's questions in three sections. Part I addresses suicide risk assessment, including special population issues. Part II covers treatment and addresses somatic therapies as well as strategies for successful service to persons in split-treatment settings. Finally, the editors organize expert discussion on the response after a patient commits suicide. The reviewer comments that this book advances clinical psychiatry one step closer toward a clearer understanding of the complicated tragedy of suicide. Chapters in the book address the knowledge base thoroughly, crystallizing content around case studies and ending on 'pearls of wisdom,' which are presented as key points. As a psychiatric administrator with an awareness of the gap between the evidence base and clinical practice, one question remains of interest to the reviewer: How can I best support a mental health system so that failure modes associated with suicide can be overcome by implementing and maintaining high-quality, evidence-based suicide risk assessment and risk reduction? This text's excellence has the reviewer looking forward to another book on this topic by Simon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)