Assistant Professor Department of Psychiatry University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan
Ahmad Subhi Abu-Mohammad, MD
Research Area Specialist Department of Psychiatry University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan
Disclosures
The authors report no financial relationships with any companies whose products are mentioned in this article, or with manufacturers of competing products.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Victor Hong, MD, for his significant contribution and Nasuh Malas, MD, MPH, and Brendon Watson, MD, PhD, for their feedback.
Assessment of the imminent risk of suicide is complicated and not well researched. A patient’s future planning can be used to better inform the evaluation. A patient may have a limited ability to generate future plans while contemplating suicide. Future plans that are specific, rich in details, achievable, dedicated to addressing the near future, and expressed smoothly and in a noncalculated fashion may be more reliable than other types of plans. The process of future planning may indicate low imminent suicide risk when it leads the patient to generate new plans to address current circumstances or the near future. When evaluating a patient’s imminent suicide risk, clinicians should consider abandoning a binary “is there future planning or not” approach and adopting a more complex, nuanced understanding to appropriately utilize this important factor in the risk assessment.
Bottom Line
A patient’s ability to plan for the future should be explored during an assessment of imminent suicide risk. Future plans that are specific, rich in details, achievable, dedicated to addressing the near future, and expressed smoothly and in a noncalculated fashion may be more reliable than other types of plans.
