White paper - on the principles of mental health risk assessment

Risk assessment is a foundation skill for all mental health clinical practice. It involves identifying risk factors and synthesising, integrating and formulating risk to adequately understand the person at risk. The purpose of risk assessment and formulation is to address risks and enable people to have fuller, more meaningful lives.

In this paper, the Office of the Chief Psychiatrist aims to offer guidance to service providers in the context of the tensions that arise as a result.

This paper describes an evidence-based approach to risk to inform thinking in the mental health sector. It describes the key shared principles of risk formulation and mitigation for the sector and explains clinical approaches for non–mental health people who want to understand how decisions about risk are reached.