THE ASSESSMENT, MANAGEMENT, AND TREATMENT OF SUICIDALITY - TOWARD CLINICALLY INFORMED AND BALANCED STANDARDS OF CARE

This article reviews and integrates the current literature on assessme nt, management, and treatment of suicidality. The review provides an i ntegration of existing literature within a conceptual framework that a llows for direct clinical application and assists in developing and ar ticulating definable, clinically informed, empirically supported, and balanced standards of care across the clinical domains of risk assessm ent, ongoing management, and treatment of suicidality. Finally, limita tions in our current knowledge base are identified (e.g., application of risk assessment findings to daily clinical decision making), subseq uent constraints on clinical practice are emphasized (e.g., lack of an y clear consensus on effective treatment or management approaches), an d directions for future research are discussed (e.g., treatment effect iveness studies, risk assessment over clinically relevant time periods ).