Approach to adolescent suicide prevention

Marcia Kostenuik; Mohana Ratnapalan

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Helpful article
Nicola Wiggelinkhuizen

Published on: 03 November 2010
Good Review!
Carly A Thompson

Published on: 27 October 2010
Adolescent Suicide Prevention
Brighid N Drain

Published on: 02 September 2010

Published on: (3 November 2010)
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Helpful article
Nicola Wiggelinkhuizen, GP
I found this article helpful. A few points were, in particular, good reminders for me: 1) Adolescents often don't present with psychiatric symptoms - we need to be alert to the sign; 2) Reminding the patient about confidentiality of the consult; 3) History taking tips e.g. anything awful happened to you. Overall a helpful article. Thank you.

Competing Interests: None declared.
Published on: (27 October 2010)
Page navigation anchor for Good Review!
Good Review!
Carly A Thompson, Physician
This is a very thorough review of adolescent suicide prevention with excellent resources and links. I found one of the most helpful points was assessing a patient's level of intent. I often find teenage patients to be ambivalent about their intent. Rating intent on a scale of 1-10 can help quantify it so I can better assess their degree of risk.
I also appreciated the hint on asking whether the teen believe...
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This is a very thorough review of adolescent suicide prevention with excellent resources and links. I found one of the most helpful points was assessing a patient's level of intent. I often find teenage patients to be ambivalent about their intent. Rating intent on a scale of 1-10 can help quantify it so I can better assess their degree of risk.
I also appreciated the hint on asking whether the teen believes that suicide is an acceptable option. However, I'm not sure whether a teen saying that suicide is not acceptable would change my opinion of whether a teen was at imminent risk.
I appreciate the resources you included. Do you know whether these "help lines" actually reduce the number of completed suicides? My understanding is that help lines may field many calls, but the number of completed suicides before and after implementation do not change.
A worthwhile read! Carly Thompson
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Competing Interests: None declared.
Published on: (2 September 2010)
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Adolescent Suicide Prevention
Brighid N Drain, family physician
Thank you for this article on risk assessment and the importance of addressing the issue when noticing scars from cutting behaviours. I have found as well that patients are usually willing to explain further when cutting scars are noted. It can be difficult however, to assess how at risk patients are , so thanks for this comprehensive review.
Brighid Drain

Competing Interests: None declared.