Violence and Suicidality : Perspectives in Clinical and Psychobiological Research : Clinical and Experimental Psychiatry

First published in 1990. This monograph series, published under the auspices of the Department of Psychiatry of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, is meant to keep track of important developments in the profession pf psychiatry, to summarize what has been achieved in particular fields, and to bring together the viewpoints obtained from disparate vantage points-in short, to capture some of the excitement ongoing in modern psychiatry, both in its clinical and experimental dimensions. Violence and suicidality have always been major public health issues, but it is only fairly recently that they have become the focus of some major clinical and biological research efforts. This is due partly to a large increase in suicide and homicide rates in the young and partly to a realization that effective management of psychiatric patients cannot be based on categorical diagnosis alone, but requires an understanding of the patient's entire behavioral profile. This volume attempts to describe some of the most important advances in the psychobiological understanding of the behavioral dimensions of suicide and violence that have been made over the last 10 years. It is comprised of papers presented at two symposia held under the auspices of the department of psychiatry of Albert Einstein College of Medicine that were devoted to the topics of violence and suicide.