Notes of the book 'New Approaches to Preventing Suicide':
Mainly this book talks about a new approachment - high suicide risk factors assessment in A+E Departmant and primary cares. Several risk factors for suicide have been figured out by professionals, patients who have been noticed are belong to the risk group will be suggested to take assessment to categorize their risk (from low risk to very high risk), correspondingly, actions which focus on the specific categories of risk have been got ready to adopt to the suicidal people.
This is a very good and efficient pre-suicide preventing intervention. A&E department may be the first or only place that many people at risk of suicide can turn to in order to seek help. Although the interventions are not necessarily the sole preserve of mental health staff, the advent of mental health liaison teams has increased opportunities for A&E departments to more effectively recogise suicide risk and deliver appropriate interventions. However, many problems exist in this methods, the most significant one is the communication problem.
The only evaluating way for A&E staff is interview - asking people questions. However, suicide intent is the issue that professionals find difficult to ask about, because it is sensitive and offensive. Possible suicidal people may also find it hard to talk due to feeling ashamed or embarrassed. So people might be lie or avoid key points when they talk to professionals face to face. Consequently the result of the evaluation usually unacurate that cause professionals' wrong decision. Because problems in applying risk factors to identify suicide are formidable, and decision analysis involves assigning a probability to each potential clinical outcome. These probabilites represent the clinician's 'best guess' about how likely a particular outcome is, and are based on clinical features and data from relevant clinical studies. However, the use of decision analysis to evaluate risks in psychiatry has its problems - the evidence to guide us in certain situations simply does not exist.
According to the above analysis of the communication, I came out a new idea: to design a efficient communication system which help suicidal people to tell story without hesitant instead of face to face interview. But I'm not sure what will be the system like, so I need to talk about it with Mike tommorrow.
