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Mental health
Screening tools should not be used to determine suicide risk
  1. Dennis Ougrin1,2,
  2. Annabel Chappell3
  1. 1Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
  2. 2East London NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK
  3. 3Enhanced Treatment Service, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Professor Dennis Ougrin; dennis.ougrin{at}kcl.ac.uk

https://doi.org/10.1136/ebnurs-2024-104114

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    Commentary on: Flores JP, Kahn G, Penfold RB, et al. Adolescents who do not endorse risk via the Patient Health Questionnaire before self-harm or suicide. JAMA Psychiatry. 2024;81(7):717–26

    Implications for practice and research

    • Screening tools should not be used to determine the risk of self-harm and suicide in young people.

    • Research should focus on novel approaches to predicting the risk of self-harm and suicide.

    Context

    Self-harm is defined as self-injury or self-poisoning, irrespective of the presence or absence of suicidal intent.1 Self-harm could be divided into the following categories: (1) self-harm with suicidal intent (suicide attempts); (2) self-harm without suicidal intent (non-suicidal self-injury and non-suicidal self-poisoning) and (3) self-harm with undetermined or mixed intent. Self-harm resulting in a presentation to an emergency room is the strongest known predictor of death by suicide.1

    The prevalence of self-harm is just under 20%.1 At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, …

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    Footnotes

    • Competing interests DO has received research funding from the National Institute for Health Research, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, Maudsley Health, the Medical Research Council, Barts Charity, Maudsley Charity, the Kavli Trust, Guy’s and St Thomas’s Charity and Psychiatry Research Trust. DO has received donations from British-Ukrainian Aid, Clinical Partners, the British Medical Association, UNICEF and Ukraine Charity for his humanitarian work. DO has received or will receive royalties for publications from Hodder Arnold and Cambridge Scholars.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.