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