Collection: Suicide Prevention in Young People

What happens when normal adolescent urges combine with difficult life stressors and – often – emotional dysregulation? The result is likely to be a troubled teen who is in danger of self-harming. This collection answers the question of what we need to know in order to better understand the pathways to self-harm and the means of reducing the incidence of self-harm; part of the answer lies in understanding what the research says, so one course discusses the results of a meta-analysis of random-controlled trials of interventions delivered to young people with a history of self-harm.

Dialectical behaviour therapy was developed to help those with borderline personality disorder (BPD) to a more satisfying, healthy life. When mental health professionals realised that emotional dysregulation, which is at the base of BPD, is also common in adolescents with challenging behaviours, DBT-A – Dialectical behaviour therapy for adolescents – was born. DBT-A is central to two of the courses in this collection. One of them explains the seven adaptations made to standard DBT in order to create DBT-A. Another looks at how DBT-A treats five common adolescent presentations: self-harming/suicidal, substance-abusing, anxiety-disordered, eating-disordered, and disruptive teens. For each presentation, discussion includes the theoretical dialectics, case considerations, goal setting and commitment-gaining strategies that are most effective.

One strand of thinking suggests that some prevention programs are not as effective as they could be because they address the problem at an individual, rather than systems, level. Accordingly, one course proposes school-based suicide prevention, with a focus on using online tools and technologies to support both parents and students through interventions, and also to monitor those at risk. A monitoring tool is offered which can be administered or used as a self-report measure.

An increasingly common presentation to counselling is that of LGBTIQA+ young people; trans and gender-diverse adolescents experience higher rates of mental health difficulties and poorer mental health than their same-gender-attracted peers; thus, one of the courses outlines both risk and protective factors related to the mental health of these young people. A strong contemporary influence on young people is the internet, so the collection also contains a course which looks at ways in which media reporting, social media, and general internet use may contribute to suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts. Differentiating between low-severity and high-severity users, the lecturer explores the complex picture of internet use by those who may be suicidal, with suggestions for clinical intervention.