NCJ Number
139020
Date Published
1992
Length
11 pages
Annotation
A developmental perspective adopted to treat suicidal young people considers all aspects of the person's past including family history, temperment, life events, relationship patterns, and coping qualities as potentially relevant to the current suicidal condition.
Abstract
Clinical work with suicidal adolescents raises many conceptual, clinical, and ethical problems: how to classify children as suicidal rather than merely inclined toward risk taking behavior; how to adopt criteria for adult suicidal behavior to children; and how to respond to parental assesments of their child's behavior. The clinical assessment of the suicidal juvenile relies on an understanding of the processes of ambivalence, splitting, and confusion; the distinctions between pathogenic and pathoplastic forces producing the suicidal state; and the existence of psychiatric disorders that may increase the risk of suicide including severe depression, substance abuse, survival of a family member or peer's suicide, and a violent or abusive family history. The phases of clinical work are divided into the conventional areas of referral, assessment, treatment, and ending. 36 references