Adolescent Suicide: An Integrated Approach to the Assessment of Risk and Protective Factors

by Peter Gutierrez, Augustine Osman

Overview

Suicide and suicide attempts among adolescents are significant public health problems. Consequently, identifying at-risk youth in time to provide intervention not only helps to prevent suicides and suicide-related injuries but improves young persons' overall quality of life and increases the chances for healthy and productive lives. Believing that adolescent suicide can be prevented, Gutierrez and Osman have developed a set of tools for assessing suicide risk, designed especially for adolescents. In contrast to the most common assessments that focus solely on risk factors, these tools measure both risk and protective factors in order to predict more accurately the probability of suicide and suicide-related behaviors. This guide is designed to enable nonspecialists as well as professional clinicians, researchers, school psychologists, and other school-based professionals to select appropriate assessment tools and to evaluate the results.

Recognized experts in suicidology, both Gutierrez and Osman have published numerous specialized articles. This book synthesizes their work in a manner accessible to all practitioners responsible for identifying and working with at-risk adolescents. Included is an appendix of five assessment tools that can easily be photocopied for repeated use.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875806167
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	01/07/2008
Edition description:	1
Pages:	230
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.49(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Peter M. Gutierrez is a Research Psychologist with the Denver VA's Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center. Augustine Osman is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Part I –Theoretical and Empirical Issues Related to Adolescent Suicide
1. Introduction to the Assessment of Risk and Protective Factors
2. Empirically Supported Risk Factors
3. Empirically Supported Protective Factors
4. Guidelines for the Development and Validation of Suicide-Related Behavior Instruments: Psychometric Considerations
Part II – Empirically Based Self-Report Instruments
5. The Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire and the Self-Harm Behavior Questionnaire
6. The Reasons for Living Inventory for Adolescents and the Suicide Resilience Inventory-25
7. Simultaneous Assessment of Risk and Protective Factors: The Positive and Negative Suicide Ideation Inventory and the Multi-Attitude Suicide Tendency Scale
Part III – Guides to the Assessment of Suicide
8. Administration, Scoring, and Interpretation Questionnaires
9. Assessment of High Schools and Other Nonclinical Settings
10. Assessment of Minority Youth
11. The Importance of Predictive Validity
Appendix
•Positive and Negative Suicide Ideation (PANSI) Inventory
•Reasons for Living Inventory for Adolescents (RFL-A)
•Self-Harm Behavior Questionnaire (SHBQ)
•SHBQ Score Sheet
•Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire (SBQ-R)
•Suicide Resilience Inventory-25 (SRI-25)
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

Extremely well done and quite thorough. The authors do an excellent job in walking the reader through the different facets of the book as well as providing understandable explanations of why psychometric properties are needed in the area of adolescent suicidology.

James J. Mazza

Provides a critical review of the extant literature and provides SPECIFIC recommendations in two areas: 1) how to go about the process of assessment with adolescents and 2) guidelines for developing new instruments in this area. A useful and clinically applicable text.

M. David Rudd

A must-read for any school psychologist, guidance counselor, or mental health clinician who comes in contact with adolescents on a regular basis. This is a comprehensive, scholarly, and up-to-date review of empirically based, suicide-related, self-report instruments that should be part of the armamentarium of tools for the assessment of at-risk adolescents.

Morton M. Silverman

A must-read for any school psychologist, guidance counselor, or mental health clinician who comes in contact with adolescents on a regular basis. This is a comprehensive, scholarly, and up-to-date review of empirically based, suicide-related, self-report instruments that should be part of the armamentarium of tools for the assessment of at-risk adolescents.

--Morton M. Silverman, M.D., University of Chicago

Extremely well done and quite thorough. The authors do an excellent job in walking the reader through the different facets of the book as well as providing understandable explanations of why psychometric properties are needed in the area of adolescent suicidology.

--James J. Mazza, PH.D., University of Washington

Provides a critical review of the extant literature and provides SPECIFIC recommendations in two areas: 1) how to go about the process of assessment with adolescents and 2) guidelines for developing new instruments in this area. A useful and clinically applicable text.

--M. David Rudd, Ph.D., ABPP, Texas Tech University, President, Texas Psychological Association, Past-President, American Association of Suicidology

From the Publisher