Suicide and Happiness: Using Suicide Theories and Data to Construct Meaningful Interventions

In this course, Dr. John Sommers-Flanagan, Ph.D., Department of Counseling, University of Montana, stresses the need to collaborate with suicidal clients with transparency to find out their triggers toward suicidality. He outlines the main points of numerous established suicide theories to help you co-construct strategies in the emotional, interpersonal, and cognitive dimensions and emphasises the need to move forward from empathetic honouring of the client’s experience to bringing in new (more positive, helpful) thoughts only when the client is ready. Several case vignettes illustrate the importance of proposing alternatives to suicide, utilising a bottom-up approach, especially when the client feels hopeless.