Suicide Risk Assessment and Response is a four-hour didactic course for R-1 psychiatry residents.   It involves interactive case discussion, a lecture on suicide risk assessment, and a panel discussion of psychiatrists who have lost patients to suicide.

​

Goals and Objectives for the course include:

​

• Developing a beginning understanding of how to structure a suicide risk assessment.

 

• Increasing familiarity with suicide risk factors and protective factors.

 

• Understanding that some patients will die from suicide as a result of their illness. 

 

• Understanding that we cannot accurately predict suicide risk for any individual patient.

 

• Understanding that clinical failures are not personal failures.

 

• Developing an awareness of post-suicide reactions.

 

• Developing an awareness with resources for support after a suicide. 

 

• Familiarity with University of Colorado Department of Psychiatry residency guidelines for response to patient suicide. 

​

​