Suicide and Self-Harm in Adolescents: Effective Assessment and Intervention Strategies for Young People in Crisis – Tony L. Sheppard

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Helping young people heal is your greatest reward.

But when treating adolescents with depression, anxiety, and trauma the full extent of their suffering is not always obvious.

Many in distress wear a mask of strength while secretly harming themselves or hiding their struggle with thoughts of suicide. You worry that you could be missing critical signs.

This recording will provide you with the assessment tools you need to unmask self-harming and suicidal thoughts, adapt interventions from DBT and CBT to work with the distinct challenges of treating suicidal and self-harming adolescents, and manage the specific confidentiality and liability issues that accompany working with minors.

There’s too much at stake to be unprepared!

Finish this critical program feeling confident and capable in using these vital assessment tools and treatment techniques to bring hope and healing to vulnerable young clients!

1. Employ clinical screening and assessment tools to help you determine which clients present the highest risk for suicide.
2. Apply motivational techniques that engage resistant suicidal and self-harming teens in the therapeutic process.
3. Develop strategies for incorporating schools and peer groups into your treatment plans for suicidal and self-harming clients, and communicate how this multi-systemic approach can improve treatment outcomes.
4. Articulate how alternative coping strategies can be introduced in-session to help self-injuring clients manage triggering situations without engaging in self-harm.
5. Communicate how clinicians can foster support among family members with techniques that promote problem solving and communication, and help young people feel in control and part of the therapeutic process.
6. Utilize therapeutic interventions from Dialectical Behavior Therapy to improve your client’s coping skills and interpersonal effectiveness.

Suicide and NSSI

• The relationship between suicide and self-injurious behavior
• When clients present with depression, anxiety, trauma
• Confidentiality, documentation, and legal considerations

Assessment Tools for Adolescents

• Formal assessment tools for NSSI
  • Recency and frequency
  • Severity
  • Triggers
  • Who’s aware
• Suicide risk assessment
  • SAFE-T
  • C-SSRS
  • Ideation, plan, means, intent
  • Level of risk, intervention and when to hospitalize

Motivational Interviewing Techniques That Engage Young People in Treatment

• Tips to quickly establish rapport
• Using the Stages to Change/Motivational Interviewing Model in Treatment
• Overcome therapy interfering behaviors
• When parents are ready for change NOW!

Adapt DBT for Use with Adolescents

• Track suicidal and self-harming urges with diary cards
• Reduce emotional reactivity and improve distress tolerance
• Identifying emotions and triggers
• Mindfulness practices and relaxation techniques
• Reproducible handouts and checklists

CBT Interventions to Build Coping Skills and Manage Crisis

• ”Thought flipping” to maintain positive focus
• Address body image issues
• Create opportunities to build resilience, self-efficacy and self-control
• Handle suicidal crisis – self-soothing and distraction techniques

Effectively Work with Parents, Peers and Schools

• Interpersonal effectiveness skills for adolescents
• Training exercises to convey feelings/read the feelings of others
• Integrate parents into treatment
  • Parental behaviors that can do more harm than good
  • Means restriction strategies for safe home environments
• Involve schools and peers
  • Learn to build “Trusted Adult” support networks
  • Peer education approaches that create support
  • Minimize the impact of bullying