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How Psychiatrists Approach Wrist-Cutting Cries For Help

May 16th, 2011 by Dinah Miller, M.D. in Expert Interviews
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When Roy and I were on Talk of the Nation this past week, a called phoned in to ask about her sister. The question was about care in the Emergency Room/Department, so it was a perfect Roy question and he fielded it. I’ve been playing with it since, and wanted to talk more about this particular scenario, because the scenario was very common, and the question was more complicated than it seems.

From the transcript of the show:

ANN (Caller): Hi, thank you very much. I would like to ask Dr. Roy (oh, I gave him his blog name here) a question: My sister was admitted to emergency when she cut her wrists, and the doctor on call pulled me aside and said, do you think she was trying to kill herself?

And I said – because my sister is very intelligent – I said, if my sister really wanted to kill herself, she would have done it. I think she’s asking for help.

And so he said – and so he had her see the psychiatrist who was on call, or on duty. And she spoke with him for a while. And he sent her home, saying: Well, if you need me, I’m here.

What I would like to ask Dr. Roy is, what protocol was going on there? Why did they allow that to happen? And what would you change, if you could? Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*