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Investigators developed a brief screening instrument for assessing suicide risk in patients aged 10 to 21 years who presented to three academic pediatric emergency departments with medical/surgical or psychiatric chief complaints. Patients were excluded if they were triage level 1, had developmental or cognitive impairment, or their parents or guardians did not speak English. Research assistants asked 17 potential suicide-screening questions and then administered the Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire (SIQ), which ranks answers to 15 or 30 questions, depending on age, and was used in this study as the criterion standard for adolescent suicidal risk assessment.
A convenience sample of 524 patients (mean age, 15 years) was enrolled over 2 years; …