Reformulating suicide risk formulation: From prediction to prevention

Suicide risk has been typically assessed as low, medium and high despite little evidence for its validity, reliability, or utility. The authors present an alternative which uses four distinct judgments to directly inform intervention plans: (1) risk status (the patient’s risk relative to a specified subpopulation), (2) risk state (the patient’s risk compared to baseline or other specified time points), (3) available resources from which the patient can draw in crisis, and (4) foreseeable changes that may exacerbate risk. They provide a case illustration. The model is intended to provide psychiatric education with a more prevention-oriented means of assessing suicide risk.

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