This week clinical I felt better prepared than I did with my first week. I was able to focus a lot more on interpersonal skills and develop therapeutic relationship with my patients. In terms of Mental Status Examination (MSE), this assessment provided me with a helpful base of information from which to observe changes, progress, and monitor risks. Especially, suicide risk assessment is a gateway to patient treatment and management. The purpose of suicide risk assessment is to identify treatable and modifiable risks and protective factors that inform the patient’s treatment and safety management requirements. I got insight into how important it is to document suicide risk assessments with sufficient information. Documentation of suicide risk assessments facilitates continuity of care and promotes communication between staff members across changing shifts. It is easy for suicidal patients to “fall through the cracks” of a busy psychiatric unit that has rapid patient turnover of admissions and discharges, and mostly during shift change. Asking question such as “What is your view of the future?” or “Do you think things will get better or worse?” helped me to elicit important information regarding patients suicidal ideation. Additionally, how my patients expressed their hope about the future assisted me to identify, prioritize, and integrate risk and protective factors into an overall assessment of the patient’s suicide risk and include in MSE.
I was able to meet course
The current suicide rate among 15- to 24-year olds is quite disturbing. Growing in numbers since 2007, the latest toll taken in 2013 on suicide within college settings is 11.1 deaths per 100,000 people (Scelfo, 2015). According to the article Suicide on Campus and the Pressure of Perfection, Pennsylvania State University had six students commit suicide in a 13-month stretch (Scelfo, 2015). Suicide within college settings are usually linked with severe depression. As mentioned by Kevin Breel in the Confessions of a Depressed Comic Ted Talk, depression is not sadness, real depression is being sad when everything in your life is going right and this, this I can personally relate to.
Psychiatric and general hospitals are required to, “Conduct a risk assessment that identifies specific characteriscts of the individual served and environmental features that may increase or decrease the risk for suicide” (Joint Commission, 2010). Many psychiatric hospitals have extended their services in the last few decades to drug and alcohol rehabilitation and these admissions and their environments will now require a complete suicide risk assessment, if it has not been done so before.
This source conveys the message of ensuring safe care transitions. Whereby innovative methods are created for suicide attempts when one goes through this transitions which reduce suicide risk and creates a smooth and uninterrupted care transition from one setting to another. It tells us that in order to ensure suicide risk continuity it is important to remove barriers to scheduling a patients follow up appointments. It creates strategies such as a warm hand off, rapid referral, caring contacts and other bridging strategies.
During my nursing career, I have worked in many high stress areas (ex; labor and delivery, where not every outcome is great, medical surgical unit, where a lot of people would get diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and neurosurgical unit, where I took care of many young individuals affected by glioblasoma multiforme) where my patients were depressed (acute depression) due to their diagnosis and were not sure how to cope with their situation. I did have several suicidal patients, as well. Reflecting on this week’s readings, especially on Meghan’s pp presentations, I must admit that I have to learn more about different depression and suicide tools that are available. That is going to help me not only in my current practice but also in the future.
Suicide rate is a grow problem in the United States according to the American foundation for suicide prevention more than 41,149 suicides were reported in 2013. The highest rate of suicides is committed by adults between age 45-64 and this is especially true amongst the elderly. Older adults are inflected with a terminal disease, loneness and depression and because of this they are committing suicide at a higher rate. Suicide amongst the men is steadily higher than women, in 2013, 77.9% were male and 22.1% were female. Men success rate for suicide is much higher, because their attempt is more lethal, for example, men are more than likely to shot themselves, whereas women are more likely to use poisons to end their life. Suicide Rate committed race/ethnicity was higher among Whites 14.2%, American Indians and Alaska Natives 11.7%, Asians and Pacific Islanders 5.8%, Blacks 5.4% and Hispanics 5.7%. According to the mean method used to commit suicide is a firearm, then suffocation and poisoning. The main cause of suicide is due to mental health condition and depression is at the foremost leading factor.
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide is the tenth leading cause of death among Americans, accounting for 41,000 deaths in 2013. More than half of all suicides are related to firearms.” Many people have bad thoughts, thoughts so horrific in terms that they want to end their own lives. It’s not just the thoughts that they have, it’s also the different situations they have going on in their lives. In the book: It’s kind of a Funny Story; it expresses the thoughts of one of the characters “I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that's really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you're so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.” This character is expressing, the intensity of even being awake. They would rather kill themselves than to go on living the horrible life that they may lead. Suicide is always controversial, many people believe that suicide should never be an option. Although for some of us it is, for me it was at one point. Earlier this year, I was on the brink of taking my life. I was so fed up with everything, I was a mess, and i couldn’t take it anymore. The drama with my dad, and his new girlfriend, then all the stress from school and my two jobs. One day, I had enough, I couldn’t take it anymore it was too much. I got out of work, and I had a bad day at work, the customers were so rude, and I felt helpless. I went to the kitchen, and I grabbed a knife,
Have you ever been through a tough situation and felt like there was no solution? Many people do and unfortunately many people also solve their solution by ending their life. In fact, every 13 minutes, someone commits suicide in the U.S (http://www.save.org/). Whether your friends or acquaintances, chances are you will know someone who has committed suicide. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. Urban Meyer, current coach of the Ohio State football team, once stated, “Are you going to be the problem or the solution?” An organization known as the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) has decided they will be the solution to suicide.
I am a psychiatric nurse and I have been in the psychiatric field since 2009. I have been mental health technician, licensed practical nurse and lastly I am a registered nurse. I know how every position works and the interactions with patients, but the one thing that does not change in each position is safety. In Behavioral Health the most important intervention is to ensure patient safety and staff safety as well. My main assessment is the psych assessment because to be in my floor the patient has to be medically clear (Hinojosa, Knapp, & Woodworth, 2015). This allows me to concentrate mainly in the patient’s behavioral health. The first question that I do to any patient is if they are having any suicidal or homicidal ideation. If the patient expresses such ideations, the next question should be if there is any
Joseph Connelly Gazzola used to be a Northeastern University football star. He has since taken his own life, and it has hit everyone he knew very hard.
Today, the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. The researchers studied a high-risk group of psychiatric patients after their most recent attempt of suicide and compared them to equally ill patients without a history of suicide attempts. Treatment for patients who have just recently attempted suicide usually are put in a short-term inpatient unit for creating a crisis plan and becoming stabilized. Once these patients are released from the unit they are at a higher risk for repeated attempts or successful suicide. This risk lasts much longer than just a year after their first attempt. To assess the patients in the study the researchers gave them several self-reporting tools to fill out. Some of these tools included the RFLI, CDRISC,
Because I work in an hospital that cares for populations at great risk for substance abuse and untreated mental issues and disorders, I get to see patients that have, or at some time will try to commit suicide, I would like to take this opportunity to learn how to properly assess the community, to help those in need, and to educate their families and friends to look for, and recognize signs that can prevent suicides, toward this end, it is important that I have the necessary knowledge to assimilate the information in this study, in a manner that will provide greater benefit not only to my
Thesis: While Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, I believe That Suicide is wrong.
Have you ever known someone who’s committed or tried to commit suicide and thought, “I wish I would’ve done something, said something, to stop it from happening?” I know I would ask myself that question everyday if I hadn’t. A few years ago, a good friend of mine thought her life was so bad she wanted to end it. I did the only thing I could think, and told the nearest teacher. It may sound so childish or stupid, but it worked. Luckily, she’s still alive and well. I’m here to make sure you can make the difference and help a person who might be, or is suicidal. Just think of what would happen if you didn’t try to help.
Someone, somewhere, commits suicide every 18 minutes. You might never be able to tell who it will be, it could be the person sitting right next . Statistics reveal that approximately three million youths, between 12-18, have either thought about or attempted suicide in the past year. More than 1/3, actually succeeded.
Depression affects everyone's life at sometime or another. Depression comes in a wide variety of forms, from mild unhappiness to a chemical imbalance in the mind. There are many different symptoms that reveal a person's problem with depression. If left untreated, depression may continue to develop into a serious illness or even death.