Growth Potential in the Suicidal Experience

In this course, Dr. DeQuincy Meiffren-Lezine, Ph.D., Director of the Lived Experience Academy, explains how getting a suicidal client back to “recovery” – the pre-suicide attempt baseline – is insufficient, given that the baseline generally does not represent a high quality of life. Dr. Meiffren-Lezine suggests that a better path is to leverage the suicidal experience the person had, drawing on their values, social circle, and other aspects, to create growth through reflection on what they have learned. He outlines the notion of “post-suicide growth” with its loops and stages as a way of moving from crisis and recovery to meaning-making, reflection, and transformation over time.