Psychiatric Stress Debriefing: Alleviating the Impact of Patient Suicide and Assault

Patient suicide & patient assault on staff is discussed in this article. Reasons why these occurrences may at times be unavoidable are outlined. A protocol for crisis intervention with staff is introduced. Psychological autopsies are compared & contrasted with critical incident stress debriefing. A psychiatric stress debriefing protocol is presented which uses techniques from both the psychological autopsy & critical incident stress debriefing. (19 refs.)