Emergencies in Mental Health Practice

Focusing on acute clinical situations in which there is an imminent risk of serious harm or death to self or others, this practical resource helps clinicians evaluate and manage a wide range of mental health emergencies. Authors examine how to distinguish crises that are emergencies from those that are not, and provide basic instruction in crisis theory and emergency interviewing. The volume then provides guidelines for intervening with suicidal patients, potentially violent patients, and vulnerable victims of violence, as well as patients facing life-and-death medical decisions, with careful attention to risk management and forensic issues. Also addressed are emergency-related conditions including self-mutilation, alcohol and drug-related crises, adverse reactions to psychotropic medication, and psychological symptoms of medical conditions. Finally, chapters consider the effects of emergency intervention on clinicians and offer suggestions for managing stress.

This book clearly and creatively lays out effective techniques for rapidly responding to a wide variety of real-world crises. Empirically solid and clinically astute, this work is without peer as a guide to providing urgent care. When time is of the essence, every practitioner will want to have Kleespies' book within arm's reach. --John Monahan, PhD, Doherty Professor of Law, University of Virginia This book provides an extraordinarily well-stocked workroom of tools necessary for today's clinicians. It begins with an awareness of the appalling deficiency in graduate clinical training to ready mental health clinicians to deal with a wide and anxiety-provoking range of psychiatric crises. It succeeds admirably in providing the essential knowledge and competencies that readers need in order to become effective interventionists. Moreover, it helps clinicians contain and manage both their affect and their exposure to malpractice risk should a patient threaten violence to self or others. With these tools, clinicians can build structures capable of weathering any and all storms. Timely and strategic, this book should be required reading for both novice and experienced professionals. --Alan L. Berman, PhD, author of Adolescent Suicide -

Phillip M. Kleespies, PhD, ABPP, VA Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Ma .