Sunday, January 17, 2010

Guard Fired After Noting but not Intervening in Youth Hanging

"An Ohio youth prison guard has been fired and two others disciplined after a teen offender's attempt to hang himself in a juvenile detention cell was ignored.

A state investigative report obtained by The Associated Press says the guard saw the youth with a blanket around his neck, noted the suicide attempt on a log and walked away without intervening.

The report says two other guards who were later suspended knew the youth may have been attempting to try to kill himself but failed to check on the teen, who survived."

Sunday, January 10, 2010

More Garbage Assessment of Suicide

If Dr. Shawn Christopher Shea ever serves as a plaintiff expert, I would appreciate being told about it. I would intervene in the case, and seek to have a mistrial, with costs assessed to the assets of this peddler of garbage science.

"A sound suicide assessment approach or protocol is made up of 3 components:

• Gathering information related to risk factors, protective factors, and warning signs of suicide.

• Collecting information related to the patient’s suicidal ideation, planning, behaviors, desire, and intent.

• Making a clinical formulation of risk based on these 2 databases.

Practical approaches to integrating these 3 aspects of a suicide assessment have been well delineated for adults and adolescents.1-8 Innovative systematic approaches, such as the Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS) approach created by David Jobes,9 have also been developed for integrating all 3 tasks while providing collaborative intervention, which may help lay the foundation for a more evidence-based protocol for suicide assessment. Recently, Joiner and colleagues10 have delineated a promising approach based on the interpersonal theory of suicide, which gracefully integrates all 3 components necessary for a suicide assessment."

Garbage.

Court: Prison Responsible for Suicide Two Days after Threat

The court wants prison guards to have training and to report suicidal gestures and threats.

The court wants to enrich tort lawyers. About a third of the beds in prison are filled by straight mental patients. So this decision will generate a lot of lawyer fees.

The dissent should be read as a checklist of defenses for the government entity.