Suicide: Sailing on Uncertain Seas

Hi All

Last week I was lucky enough to be able to present this talk to the SWEETS Emergency Medicine Conference in Stockholm.

Thanks to Dr. Katrin Hruska for the invitation.

This is a video of my lecture and slides as presented by myself and local Broome Psych resident Dr Nick Gilbert.

The first 15 minutes is my discussion of suicide risk assessment, then 5 minutes from Nick on the biochemistry, future and therapy for suicidal patients.

Summary take home messages:

  1. Suicide is tough to predict
  2. You have to ask about suicide in your daily practice
  3. Formal risk assessment tools are sensitive, but very non-specific
  4. Predicting behaviour and making a “risk assessment” are not the same thing.
  5. To make the best call you need to delve deep into the cognitive processes that your patient is experiencing
  6. Empathy is key – you need to be able to understand their perspective
  7. Imagine that you and your patient are sailing together over some rough seas – do you have all the data, resources and share a common goal?

OK, if that makes no sense then listen to the podcast and hit me on the comments below:

DIRECT DOWNLOAD HERE 

Casey

 

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