Skip Navigation

Brought to you by: Stanford University Libraries Sign In as Personal Subscriber

Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention Advance Access originally published online on July 6, 2005
Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention 2005 5(3):251-260; doi:10.1093/brief-treatment/mhi025
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
5/3/251    most recent
mhi025v2
mhi025v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow Request Permissions
Right arrow Disclaimer
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Roberts, A. R.
Right arrow Articles by Jennings, T.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Roberts, A. R.
Right arrow Articles by Jennings, T.

© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org.

Original Article

Hanging by a Thread: How Failure to Conduct an Adequate Lethality Assessment Resulted in Suicide

   Albert R. Roberts, PhD
   Theodore Jennings, JD

From the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (Roberts) and Ball & Jennings, Ltd. (Jennings)

Contact author: Albert R. Roberts, Professor of Criminal Justice and Social Work, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Lucy Stone Hall, B-261, Piscataway, NJ 08854. E-mail: prof.albertroberts{at}comcast.net.

This article begins with a legal case exemplar demonstrating how relatively quickly suicide by hanging took place when a medical social worker and an attending physician failed to conduct an adequate suicide risk assessment. The next section examines the lawsuit against the social worker and the physician, the expert testimony, and the outcome of the jury trial. The second half of this article identifies and discusses the importance of utilizing evidence-based suicide assessment protocols, a suicide ideation flowchart, and the 7-stage crisis intervention protocol (Roberts & Yeager, 2005). The authors underscore the importance of understanding proximate cause, shared responsibility, and legal liability issues among all members of hospital-based mental health teams.

KEY WORDS: delusion, malpractice, legal liability, suicide, suicide ideation, lethality, risk assessment, proximate cause, suicide ideation






Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.