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Letter to the Editor
Published Online: 18 November 2005

No Suicide Decision

Robert C. Drye, M.D.Authors Info & Affiliations
Publication: Psychiatric News
Volume 40, Number 22
https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.40.22.0036e
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Thank you for the article in the July 1 issue in which Robert Simon, M.D., was interviewed: “Several Signs Should Alert Clinicians to Suicide Risk.
I have one small addition to make. Dr. Simon comments that there are no data to support the use of no-suicide contracts to prevent suicide. However, as Marcia Goin, M.D., pointed out in the July 18, 2003, issue, these contracts seem to have evolved from the no-suicide decision procedure published by me, Robert L. Goulding, M.D., and Mary E. Goulding M.S.W., in the February 1973 American Journal of Psychiatry in the article “No-Suicide Decisions: Patient Monitoring of Suicidal Risk.”
This procedure, which is not a contract, has been used for more than 30 years internationally with only four reported fatalities. These data were reported at a workshop at APA's 2004 annual meeting in New York in which Dr. Simon was kind enough to participate. He said he agreed that this procedure was different and professionally sound.
I should emphasize that I entirely agree with Dr. Simon's cautions against contracts in general.

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Psychiatric News
Volume 40 • Number 22 • November 18, 2005
Pages: 36

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Published online: 18 November 2005
Published in print: November 18, 2005

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Robert C. Drye, M.D.
Tempe, Ariz.
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