ABSTRACT
The assessment of risk is only the first stage of an ongoing process of action and evaluation. Risk assessment is part of the overall caring process. In that sense, it is the first action designed to reduce the likelihood of the person coming to harm. Whenever any risk to self or others is believed to be present, the professional team needs to adapt its caring relationship, to focus more specifically on what needs to be done to minimise this. In a more constructive sense, the team is beginning to think about the kind of support that might be needed to uphold the ‘self in crisis’. How might the team members1 nurture the conditions-physical, personal, interpersonal and social-that could comfort the person, or otherwise reduce the raging distress that threatens, metaphorically, to drown them?
