June 4, 2025, Catholic Charities, Harrisburg via Zoom Webconference
8:25am-10:30am, 10:40am-12:35pm
Assessing suicidal behaviors is one of the most challenging scenarios facing mental health clinicians with both patient death and serious injury as potential adverse outcomes. Challenges include identifying both chronic and acute risks for suicide and interviewing patients in an empathetic and organized manner that facilitates sharing painful or sensitive information. Stress is often high for both patient and clinician and can make accurate assessment difficult. This seminar will review evidence-based practices developed by leading emergency psychiatrists and suicide researchers and present an organized strategy for comprehensive suicide assessment giving clinicians the best chance to identify suicidal risks and accurately interview patients so that providers can make accurate treatment decisions. This seminar will make use of lecture of theoretical content and role play of practical scenarios to facilitate learning.
Objectives
As a result of participating in this workshop, attendees will be able to:
1. Identify chronic and acute risk factors for suicide.
2. Conduct a structured interview of suicidal events.
3. Incorporate behavioral approaches to facilitate discussion of suicidal topics.
4. Construct a basic safety plan to facilitate treatment planning.
About The Trainer
Kevin Hoffman is a psychiatrist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After completing a combined MD, PhD program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, NY, he completed a residency in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently completing a fellowship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and will join Stanford University’s Department of Psychiatry this summer as a child psychiatrist primarily working in the Immune Behavioral Health Clinic at Stanford.
Frequently Asked Questions
Visit our FBMHS Policies & FAQs for additional information regarding the CFBT online learning center, accommodations for disabilities, reporting problems with the course, instructions for viewing webinars, etc.