Utilization Review and Suicide Attempts: Exploring Discrepancies Between Experts’ Criteria and Clinical Practice

Experts’ criteria predicted that a hospitalized group of suicide attempters did not require hospitalization & that a nonhospitalized group of suicide attempters required hospitalization. Examination of the discrepancies between clinical practice & experts’ criteria not only revealed that incorporation of clinical measures of depressive symptomatology could improve the experts’ criteria for hospitalization but also that clinicians did not hospitalize a group of markedly symptomatic attempters.