Presentations for anxiety and depression constitute the fastest growing category of mental health diagnoses seen in emergency departments (EDs). Even non-psychiatric clinicians must be prepared to provide psychotherapeutic interventions for these patients, just as they might provide motivational interviewing for a patient with substance use disorders. This case report of an 18-year-old woman with suicidal ideation illustrates the practicality and utility of a brief, single-session, crisis intervention model that facilitated discharge from the ED. This report will help practitioners to apply this model in their own practice and identify patients who may require psychiatric hospitalization.
Clinical Manual of Emergency Psychiatry, Second Editionedited by Michelle B. Riba, M.D., M.S., Divy Ravindranath, M.D., M.S., and Gerald Scott Winder, M.D. Washington, D.C., American Psychiatric Association Publishing, 2016, 375 pp., $70.00 (paperback).
