Self-Harm and Violence: Towards Best Practice in Managing Risk in Mental Health Services presents the first exploration of the most effective clinical practice techniques relating to the management of risk in mental health care settings.

Contributors xvii Foreword xix Preface vii 1 Introduction 1Richard Whittington and Caroline Logan Part I Experience 9 2 Service Users: Experiences of Risk and Risk Management 11Kay Sheldon 3 Carers: Experiences of Risk and Risk Management 35Sally Luxton Part II Evidence 53 4 Understanding and Managing Self-Harm in Mental Health Services 55Maria Leitner and Wally Barr 5 Understanding and Managing Violence in Mental Health Services 79Richard Whittington, James McGuire, Tilman Steinert and Beverley Quinn 6 Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness: A National Overview 97Kirsten Windfuhr and Nicola Swinson 7 Evidence and Principles for Service User Involvement in Risk Management 119Helen Gilburt Part III Practice 143 8 Guidelines and Standards for Managing Risk in Mental Health Services 145Caroline Logan, Norbert Nedopil and Thomas Wolf 9 Organizations, Corporate Governance and Risk Management 163Ben Thomas 10 Formulation in Clinical Risk Assessment and Management 187Caroline Logan, Rajan Nathan and Andrew Brown 11 Evidence and Principles for Positive Risk Management 205Paul Clifford 12 Encouraging Positive Risk Management: Supporting Decisions by People with Learning Disabilities Using a Human Rights-Based Approach 215Richard Whitehead, Ged Carney and Beth Greenhill Part IV Implementation 237 13 Case Study 1: A Four-Step Model of Implementation 239Geraldine Strathdee, Phil Garnham, Jane Moore and Devendra Hansjee 14 Case Study 2: Narrowing the Gap between Policy and Practice 251Kate Hunt 15 Case Study 3: Learning from Experience – Using Clinical Risk Data to Influence and Shape Clinical Services 259Louise Fountain and Patrick McKee 16 Case Study 4: From Ticking Boxes to Effective Risk Management 267Lorna Jellicoe-Jones, Mark Love, Roy Butterworth and Claire Riding 17 Conclusions 279Caroline Logan and Richard Whittington Glossary 287 Index 297

The unique challenges faced by mental health service workers who engage with patients exhibiting violent or self-harmful behaviour is a growing concern. Service-users and practitioners exposed to these types of behaviours are often themselves the sufferers of anxiety, misery, and serious injury. Providers and commissioners alike have a shared interest in working more effectively to resolve this increasingly complex issue. Self-Harm and Violence: Towards Best Practice in Managing Risk in Mental Health Services sets out for the first time to examine and explore the most effective clinical practice techniques relating to the management of risk in mental health care settings. The volume’s contributors, many of whom were members of the original national advisory group which drew up the Department of Health’s 2007 Best Practice in Managing Risk guidelines, are all leading experts in their respective fields. The implementation of Best Practice into a variety of 'real world' clinical settings sheds important new light on the effectiveness of various risk management techniques. Self-Harm and Violence represents a state-of-the-art assessment of our knowledge and understanding of best practice in the management of risk in mental health care settings.

Self-harm and Violence: Towards Best Practices in Managing Risk in Mental Health Services fills an important gap in the literature, presenting the voice of service users, summarizing the latest research about the risk of harm to self or others, and reviewing the strength of evidence for interventions used to prevent or reduce risk and harm on inpatient psychiatric units. This scholarly, yet highly accessible book will appeal to academics who are interested in studying issues related to harm to self or others, nursing staff who manage risk on a day-to-day basis, and educators who will welcome the compilation of information in one source.   —Mary E. Johnson, Professor of Nursing, Rush University, Chicago, USA