Lagniappe

I remember listening to a keynote speaker at an ATAP conference about ten years ago who talked about conducting threat assessments without meeting the subject, instead relying on third-party information, police reports, and sometimes interview transcripts, or watching the interview from afar. This was a nuanced concept for me at the time. I had always seen the benefit of asking questions directly to the subject, reading their responses, and moving the interview forward based

The most preventable moment when assessing the potential for violence is usually before a situation crystallizes into an emergency. The most important work hinges on low-threshold sharing of small, ambiguous pieces of a puzzle (leakage, fixation, grievance signals, destabilization, access to means, accelerating stressors) that only become a clear picture when they’re named early and combined across observers. If your threat team’s name implies punishment, investigation, or la

If you’ve done threat assessment interviews long enough, you’ve asked some version of the classic question: “Have you thought about hurting yourself or someone else?”   It’s a reasonable question. It’s on the checklist. It’s part of the spine of almost every structured interview. And when someone says  yes , our antennae do what they’re supposed to do; they stand up.   But here’s the catch, and it’s a big one: not everyone hears that question the same way. And when your inter

There are questions in an interview that feel like a trapdoor. One moment you’re walking along in a human conversation, and the next you’re asking about suicide, firearms, hallucinations, or whether someone is hearing voices. These questions are essential. They’re not optional, not “nice to have,” not something we save for the end if we have time. They are load-bearing beams in a risk assessment. But here’s the catch: even when the question is clinically perfect, the  transit