If I had been fresh from a conference on cardiology and were sitting next to a three-hundred-pound man who was smoking like a chimney and eating sticks of butter, and who complained of chest pain that radiated down his left arm, I might have felt that it was appropriate to warn him that he was in real and current danger. To tell someone that he is at risk for suicide is much more difficult. I hinted around the subject, advised my new friend to go back on medications, told him it was good to be in touch with a psychiatrist just in case he ever had a recurrence. Some sense of social convention
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