2-Day Comprehensive Suicide Risk Assessment and Intervention-Work with Clients with Compassion and Confidence – Sally Spencer-Thomas

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The epidemic of suicide continues to wreak havoc in the lives of millions of Americans.

With suicide rates on the rise, the need is urgent for clinicians who can recognize warning signs earlier, intervene with current and proven strategies, and even inoculate clients against the chance of suicidal thoughts emerging in the future. It’s a daunting challenge that has undoubtedly left you feeling confused, overwhelmed, and even scared.

Don’t let fear push you away.

This recording will transform how you view and work with suicidal clients and give you the clinical tools you need to save lives. Over the course of the program, you will dive deeply into a comprehensive approach to suicide risk assessment and intervention. You will gain confidence and a heightened sense of compassion that are essential to understanding where clients are on their life journeys and how you can instill hope and a renewed desire to invest in lives that are worth living.

Finish this recording feeling confident and capable to work with suicidal clients and guide them out of the darkness and back into the light!

1. Describe how to overcome fear and personal bias when working with suicidal clients.
2. Examine the latest hot topics in suicidology and their impact on improved assessment and intervention efforts.
3. Determine the appropriate circumstances for applying upstream, midstream, and downstream approaches to suicide prevention.
4. Explain how to implement earlier identification and triage as valuable components of comprehensive risk assessment and intervention.
5. Choose language that imparts compassion and avoids stigma for use in all stages of work with suicidal clients.
6. Contrast various suicide assessment tools to better inform clinical decision-making.
7. Ascertain key indicators of imminent suicide and develop a strategy for determining when and how to hospitalize clients.
8. Reduce access to lethal means by implementing a multi-systemic approach that incorporates the suicidal person’s social connections into their safety plan.
9. Articulate the “stop, drop, and roll” of suicide prevention effectively to clients so that it can be accessed in crisis situations.
10. Employ a collaborative safety approach to help clients survive a suicidal crisis while avoiding the pitfalls of suicide contracting.
11. Utilize measurements of post-traumatic growth to assess clients’ progress in adapting more healthy response mechanisms.
12. Make sense of the unique nature of suicide grief to improve the clinical options offered in response to it.

OVERCOME BIAS AND FEAR

Prepare to do suicide work with compassion and confidence

• Self-Reflection: Time to unpack our own baggage
• Countertransference
• Our own history with suicide

HOT TOPICS IN SUICIDOLOGY

Evaluate the latest developments and their impact on assessment and intervention

• The latest data, and what to do with it
• Mental health and suicide
• Alcohol and suicide
• Opioids and suicide
• Additional forms of trauma and suicide
• Aspiring to Zero Suicide
• Why “Means Matter”
• Understanding the many forms of the suicidal mind
• Soul exhaustion

COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO SUICIDE RISK ASSESSMENT & TREATMENT

Determine where to enter the prevention stream, and how to navigate successfully

• Upstream, midstream, and downstream approaches
• Build resilience and crisis inoculation
• Earlier identification and triage
• Trauma-informed care
• Learn from the experiences of suicide attempt and loss survivors

RISK ASSESSMENT

Elicit key information from clients

• The many paths to suicide
• Communicate caring: Language to impart compassion and avoid stigma
• Suicide risk assessment
  • SAFE-T
  • IS PATH WARM
  • Ideation, plan, means, intent
  • Level of risk
• Standardized assessment tools to augment clinical judgment
• Obtaining collateral information
• Types of questions to uncover suicidal ideation
  • What if they say “No”?
  • What if they say “Yes”?
• Behavior chain analysis
• Why “No Suicide” contracts are dead
• Best practices in risk assessment

COLLABORATIVE SAFETY AGREEMENTS AND WELLNESS PLANNING

Help clients regulate emotions and feel safe, valued and connected

• Set up a safety agreement that is more likely to be followed
• Reduce access to lethal means (C.A.L.M.)
• The “Stop, Drop, and Roll” of suicide safety planning
• Treatment strategies built on preserving choice and dignity
  • Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy
  • Relapse prevention plans
  • When and how to hospitalize

MAKING MEANING

Help clients reinvest in a life worth living

• The PIE of life – brainstorm possibilities of growth
• Narrative psychology and the power of storytelling
• Cultivate social connection and re-engagement
• Choice and perspective
• Foster gratitude and a spirit of contentment after loss
• Measurements of post-traumatic growth

SAFE AND EFFECTIVE SUICIDE GRIEF & TRAUMA RESPONSE

Implement suicide grief and trauma support

• Understand the unique nature of suicide grief
• Peer-based support: Connect clients to other survivors of loss
• Access and reclaim compassion