title: Is risk assessment the new clinical model in public mental health?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Australian public mental health services have seen a rapid adoption of risk assessment into clinical practice over the past decade. It is timely to review the role of risk assessment in clinical practice, evidence for its validity and to explore its role in clinical decision-making.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There is little evidence to support the current form of risk assessment used in public mental health. The continued focus in risk may lead public psychiatrists into a bind where their specialist role is defined by a capacity that they do not fully possess. Further work is required to find ways of demonstrating our attention to the possibility of adverse outcomes whilst maintaining our skills and capacity to manage mental illness with complexity and balance within the limitations of rational decision-making.
authors.affiliation: Consultant Psychiatrist, Royal Melbourne Hospital, and Associate Professor, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
authors.forename: Alex
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Holmes
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D008605:Mental Health Services; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000379:methods*; D018570:Risk Assessment
keywords: decision making; public psychiatry; risk