From the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting, held in May, an internationally renowned expert in suicide says that the existence of a suicide-specific diagnosis would compel health systems to create tools to determine the suicide risk of individuals.
A discrete, specific diagnosis of suicidal behavior disorder could be enormously clinically useful, helping to identify at-risk patients for treatment and aiding in research on suicide, according to former APA president and suicide expert Maria A. Oquendo, M.D., Ph.D., at APA’s 2019 Annual Meeting in San Francisco last month.