Assessing suicide risk
Tony worked in a prison where his main task was the assessment and management of suicidal people. There are many systems by which one can assess how much of a risk a particular individual is of suicide or self harm. Most systems that set about assessing suicide risk do it in a mathematical fashion. They highlight certain factors that are statistically related to suicide.
For instance,
* in Australia the highest daily average for suicide is Monday, followed by
Tuesday and the lowest is Saturday
* people who have a history of depression are more likely to suicide
* there are higher suicide rates in Australian cities than in rural areas
* people who have poor coping skills
* those who are not thinking in a future oriented way
* people who have little social and family support
* people who have a history of substance abuse have a higher suicide rate
In these assessment systems one then sets about adding up the number of “boxes
ticked” for the person. The assumption is the more ticks for the person the more
likely the person is a suicide risk. Whilst this is a productive thing to do it fails to look at the individual psychology of the person at the time which also happens to be one of the most important factors in such an assessment.
In this workshop two ways to do that will be shown. And then how to combine that information with the usually gathered information to assess for the level of suicide risk.
Date: Tuesday March 18th, 2008. 7.00pm (1 to 2 hours)
Venue: 136 Loftus Street, North Perth
Contact: Tony White – email agbw@bigpond.com
or phone 9328 8993