Teaching medical professionals and trainees about adolescent suicide prevention: five key problems
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Leo Sher
Abstract
Predicting and preventing suicide represent very difficult challenges for clinicians. The awareness of adolescent suicide as a major social and medical problem has increased over the past years. However, many health care professionals who have frequent contact with adolescents are not sufficiently trained in suicide evaluation techniques and approaches to adolescents with suicidal behavior. Suicide prevention efforts among adolescents are restricted by the fact that there are five key problems related to the evaluation and management of suicidality in adolescents: 1. Many clinicians underestimate the importance of the problem of adolescent suicidal behavior and underestimate its prevalence. 2. There is a misconception that direct questioning of adolescents about suicidality is sufficient to evaluate suicide risk. 3. Another misconception is that adolescents with non-psychiatric illnesses do not need to be evaluated for suicidality. 4. Many clinicians do not know about or underestimate the role of contagion in adolescent suicidal behavior. 5. There is a mistaken belief that adolescent males are at lower suicide risk than adolescent females. Educating medical professionals and trainees about the warning signs and symptoms of adolescent suicide and providing them with tools to recognize, evaluate, and manage suicidal patients represent a promising approach to adolescent suicide prevention.
©2012 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Masthead
- Editorial
- Dean Ornish should receive the Nobel prize in medicine
- Review Articles
- Adolescent suicide in New York City: plenty of room for new research
- Consequences of prenatal substance use
- The need for evidence-based, non-drug medicine
- Teaching medical professionals and trainees about adolescent suicide prevention: five key problems
- Original Articles
- Sexual violence and associated factors among women in HIV discordant and concordant relationships in Uganda
- Educational impact of peer-intervention on the knowledge and attitudes about HIV/AIDS in adolescents in Panama
- Tobacco brand preference among Mexican adolescents
- Spirituality and substance use in a sample of Russian adolescents
- Collaborative evaluation and management of students’ health-related physical fitness: applications of cluster analysis and the classification tree
- Body weight satisfaction among New Zealand adolescents: findings from a national survey
- Prevalence of common mental disorders among Dutch medical students and related use and need of mental health care: a cross-sectional study
- Reaching Jewish ultra-orthodox adolescents: results from a targeted smoking prevention trial
- Case Report
- Rare cases of disorders of sex development (DSD) in adolescents with female phenotype
