Adult suicidal risk scales in the practice of the clinical psychologist and psychiatrist: review of available tools
Marcin Piotr Nowak1, Tomasz Pawełczyk1,2

In the context of the increasing prevalence of suicides, low notifiability of people at risk and considerable difficulties in suicidal risk assessment, the significance of relevant tools is growing. The tools facilitating the evaluation of suicidal risk assessment can be divided in two groups – tools created for other purposes, but accounting for suicidal risk estimation (designed for general mental health assessment, assessment of mood, hopelessness, psychic pain and resilience) and tools specifically created for the evaluation of suicidal risk. The latter can be divided according to the age of the examined patient (adult vs. child/adolescent) or according to the person filling out the scale (tools filled out by a professional vs. self-esteem tools). This paper presents tools for the assessment of adult patients. The tools filled out by the mental health practitioner include Suicide Intent Scale, Pierce Suicide Intent Scale, Scale for Suicidal Ideation, SAD PERSONS Scale, InterSePT Scale for Suicidal Thinking, Nurses’ Global Assessment of Suicide Risk, Tool for Assessment of Suicide Risk, Suicide Attempt Self- Injury Interview and Immediate Action Protocol. Self-esteem tools for adult patients include Beck Scale for Suicidal Ideation, Harkavy Asnis Suicide Survey, Adult Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire, Positive and Negative Suicide Ideation Inventory, Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised, Risk Assessment Suicidality Scale and Cultural Assessment of Risk for Suicide. The large number of existing tools contrasts with the small number of scales translated into Polish. Even where Polish versions are available, adequate validation in the Polish population is lacking, indicating an urgent need for further research.