The prediction and prevention of suicide: Introduction to the special issue.

Abstract

The delivery of psychological services including screening, assessing, and providing interventions to suicidal individuals occurs within all public and organized care settings where psychologists practice. These services are typically the most demanding and important clinical tasks these psychologists will perform. To inform aspects of such practice, the journal issued a call for papers and 16 of the articles received in response are part of this special issue and reviewed in this Introduction. These articles inform three broad psychological service perspectives: conceptual models and assessment, interventions, and special populations and cultures. From female firefighters and adolescent girls with chronic pain, to our veterans and military personnel and those incarcerated, the samples drawn, studied, and written about in this special issue represent an effort to address our current need for actionable knowledge in this area. The opening section presents four papers on models and assessments, the next considers individual and group interventions and perspectives on access to care, and the final section walks us through a myriad of special populations and cultures to understand facets of the prediction and prevention of suicide. (PsycINFO Database Record