Suicide Risk Screening in Pediatric Hospitals: Clinical Pathways to Address a Global Health Crisis

Advancing Research in Child Suicide: A Call to Action

“…Currently, clinicians must use their judgment and reference protocols developed for older children. 71,72 In doing so, they should be careful to consider the developmental and ethical issues noted above.…”

Pediatric Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry: An Update and Review

“…12 Using these tools, Brahmbhatt and colleagues developed streamlined clinical pathways for pediatric hospitals to implement efficient and evidence-based youth suicide assessment strategies in hospitalized patients. 13 Services should be aware that these new recommendations may increase staff burden, time spent in screening, and documentation requirements. Thus, institutional accommodations may be needed.…”

“…Clinical pathways have been developed in an attempt to standardize the care of SSRDs, delirium, and suicide risk screening, based on evidence, when available, and expert consensus. 13,15,38 This growing trend for evidence-based and best practices in child psychiatric consultation aims to improve quality of care. Given the success of these pathways, and the broad range of complicated illnesses evaluated by child psychiatric consultants, there is ample opportunity in the field for creation of future pathways.…”

Managing risk and self-harm: Keeping young people safe

“…Researchers from both the PHHS program and the pediatric urgent care center found that universal suicide screening did not add burden to their respective healthcare systems (Patel et al, 2018; Roaten et al, 2018). An international group of consultation-liaison clinicians from psychiatry and psychology developed the first clinical pathway to guide and improve screening for suicide in pediatric hospitals throughout the world and recommend screening all pediatric patients aged 10 years and older (Brahmbhatt et al, 2019). In fact, as many as 7% of 10- to 12-year-olds who presented to the ED for chief medical complaints screened positive for suicide risk in one study (Lanzillo et al, 2019).…”

“…In fact, as many as 7% of 10- to 12-year-olds who presented to the ED for chief medical complaints screened positive for suicide risk in one study (Lanzillo et al, 2019). The clinical pathway proposed by Brahmbhatt et al (2019) is a three-tiered suicide screening model in which a nurse or other trained screener first uses the ASQ, a highly sensitive screening tool for the ED (Newton et al, 2017), to briefly assess the presence of suicidal thoughts in children aged 10 years and older. If patients screen positive, the second tier involves a brief suicide safety assessment (BSSA) such as the ASQ BSSA or C-SSRS conducted by a trained mental health provider to determine the level of risk.…”