Collaborating on Safety Plans
Safety plans should be developed collaboratively with the person at risk of suicide to identify specific behaviors, actions, and situations that help them stay safe. It can be empowering for a person at risk of suicide to think through the sequence of events that can lead them toward suicide and determine ways to interrupt that pattern and move in a positive direction.
In this brief video, Vince Watts, MD, MPH, Director, VA Interprofessional Fellowship in Patient Safety, VA National Center for Patient Safety, provides some practical suggestions for helping an individual at risk develop a safety plan, and for gaining useful input from family members.
Recommended Resources
This free online course is designed to help mental health professionals counsel people at risk for suicide—and their families—on reducing access to lethal means.
This website provides information, resources, and tools for implementing Zero Suicide.
This guide shows how to work with patients at high risk for suicide to develop a safety plan.
A fill-in-the-blank template for developing a safety plan with a patient at increased risk for a suicide attempt.
This manual describes a brief clinical intervention, safety planning, that can serve as a valuable adjunct to risk assessment.
This free online course explains when to work with patients to create a safety plan and describes the steps involved in crafting one.