Psychiatrist Maria wonders if hospitalizing patients at low clinical suspicion for suicide is a form of defensive medicine:
Some psychiatrists routinely hospitalize patients (through coercion, either with or without the “help” of friends, family, et al.) who endorse suicidality when “clinical suspicion is low” that the individual will actually commit the act. The belief is that if someone is in the hospital, the risk of suicide drops significantly””after all, the ward is locked, there is less access to means of killing oneself, and there are people (nursing staff) presumably monitoring the situation. There is also the sense that the psychiatrist, by admitting this person, is “doing something”, versus asking the patient to return for an outpatient follow-up appointment the next day, which seems more like “not doing much”.
