Assessment and Treatment of Suicidal Patients in an Emergency Setting

Epidemiology Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, and more than 30,000 people in the United States kill themselves every year (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] 2000). For every two victims of homicide in the United States, there are three people who take their own lives (CDC 2000). Highlighting the seriousness of working with suicidal patients in the emergency setting is a study by Beck et al. (1985), who found that 7% of patients hospitalized for suicidal ideation without a recent attempt committed suicide during a follow-up period of 5 to 10 years. Another study followed patients who had been treated in an emergency room after self-poisoning. At 14-year follow-up, almost 22% of the patients had died and 7% had committed suicide (Suokas 2001).