Assessment and management of suicide risk in primary care

Résumé

textbfBACKGROUND: Risk assessment and management of suicidal patients is emphasized as a key component of care in specialist mental health services, but these issues are relatively unexplored in primary care services. textbfAIMS: To examine risk assessment and management in primary and secondary care in a clinical sample of individuals who were in contact with mental health services and died by suicide. textbfMETHOD: Data collection from clinical proformas, case records, and semistructured face-to-face interviews with general practitioners. textbfRESULTS: Primary and secondary care data were available for 198 of the 336 cases (59%). The overall agreement in the rating of risk between services was poor (overall kappa = .127