The test could also be administered by a social worker or other health care professional, he noted.
Dr. Miller and colleagues adopted and tested the scale in response to a mandate from the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, which requires that hospitals provide a "documented suicide-risk assessment of patients in a psychiatric hospital and patients being treated for emotional or behavioral disorders in general hospitals."
After a literature review to determine existing knowledge on suicide risk assessment instruments, they settled on the modified SAD PERSONS scale.
The scale, which has items that spell out the acronym, assigns one point to each of 10 items identified as risk factors for suicide:
