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Inpatient Versus Outpatient Management of Suicide Risk: Clinical and Ethical Considerations

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Suicide Risk Assessment and Prevention

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Abstract

In the course of treating suicidal patients, clinicians may arrive at a critical decision in which they must evaluate the costs and benefits of various approaches to risk management. Namely, clinicians may need to determine whether an inpatient or an outpatient setting is most appropriate for the management of their patients’ suicidal behaviors. Though many medical and mental health practitioners will face this decision in their professional careers, few are aware of the factors that influence the course of appropriate suicide risk management and patient care. In this chapter, the authors discuss clinical and ethical factors that providers may use to aid clinical decision-making when determining the most appropriate setting for the management and treatment of suicidal patients.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Psychology, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, USA

    Induni Wickramasinghe & Tina Thach

  2. Risk and Resilience Research Lab, Palo Alto University, Palo Alto, USA

    Lisa M. Brown

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  1. Induni Wickramasinghe
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  2. Tina Thach
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Correspondence to Induni Wickramasinghe .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosciences, Sapienza University of Rome, ROMA, Roma, Italy

    Maurizio Pompili

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Wickramasinghe, I., Thach, T., Brown, L.M. (2021). Inpatient Versus Outpatient Management of Suicide Risk: Clinical and Ethical Considerations. In: Pompili, M. (eds) Suicide Risk Assessment and Prevention. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41319-4_92-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41319-4_92-1

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