Suicide Risk Assessment and Care Planning — Interventions — Clinical Pathway: Outpatient Specialty

Suicide Risk Assessment and Care Planning Clinical Pathway — Outpatient Specialty Care

Interventions

Active Monitoring
  • Active monitoring emphasizes all of the important things that can occur BEFORE initiating a formal psychotherapeutic or pharmacological treatment to address a patient’s suicide risk.
  • The following list contains some of the elements of active monitoring:
    • Schedule frequent visits to assess for changes in clinical presentation
    • Prescribe regular exercise and leisure activities
    • Recommend a peer support group within community
    • Review self-management goals and engage in problem solving strategies
    • Follow up with patients via telephone in between sessions
    • Provide patients and families with patient educational materials
  • Refer to the Glad PC Tool Box   for more guidance on active monitoring.
Community-based Services
  • A targeted service designed to stabilize a child in their community, support success during transitions, and reintegrate a child when returning home following more intensive treatment. The goal is to provide treatment in the least restrictive environment, while maintaining the child within his or her community.
Suicide-focused Strategies
  • There are evidence-based therapies that are specifically focused on targeting suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and the factors that contribute to and maintain them. Examples of these therapies include: a) Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS); b) Cognitive Behavior Therapy – Suicide Prevention (CBT-SP); and c) Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Please refer to Zero Suicide: Interventions   for descriptions of these treatment approaches.
Intensive Outpatient Program
  • An outpatient mental health therapeutic intervention more structured and intensive than traditional outpatient therapy. Intensive Outpatient Programs usually meet 2-3 times per week and often involve individual, family, and group therapy.
Partial Hospitalization Program
  • Outpatient mental health programs that patients attend for six or more hours a day, every day or most days of the week. These programs, which are less intensive than inpatient hospitalization, will commonly offer group therapy, educational sessions and individual counseling. A PHP may be part of a hospital's services or a freestanding facility.
Safety Planning
  • A brief (20-45 minute) intervention that results in a prioritized list of warning signs, coping strategies, and resources to use during a suicidal crisis.
  • Example Safety Plan Template
Patient Education