Rita Schulte – Suicide: Identification, Intervention and Prevention Skills Every Clinician Needs

Outline

How to Assess for Suicidal Risk

• Loss and loneliness as drivers of suicidal ideation
• How trauma contributes to suicide
• Tools to assess toxic self-talk
• Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CMS)
• What to do when suicide is imminent

Guilt, Shame, Stigma and Suicidality

• How shame and guilt take clients to dark places
• How stigma feeds shame and the cycle of pain
• Resolve inner conflict and pervasive shame with Parts Work
• Meaning making interventions

Crisis Intervention Treatment Techniques: Essential Skills from CBT, DBT and Somatic Approaches

• Suicide risk as a skills deficit problem
• CBT skills to enhance emotional regulation and problem solving
• DBT techniques that directly target suicidal behavior
• Mindfulness and breathing techniques to bring calm
• Grounding exercises to interrupt suicidal impulses
• Containment skills for overwhelming thoughts

Make Suicidal Clients Feel Heard, Seen, and Understood

• Narrative Therapy Strategies, story and metaphor
• Loss timelines to release past negative experiences
• Therapeutic letter writing
• Linking Objects to handle emotional memories
• Let go of adverse life imprints

Suicide and Existential Shattering: Move Clients from “Do I Want to Live?” to “How Do I Want to Live?”

• How belief systems keep clients stuck
• Assumptions after a life shattering event
• Strategies to help clients tolerate uncertainty
• Shattered Vase exercises to restore hope
• Exercises to manage anger, unforgiveness and thoughts of revenge
  • Certificate of Debt
  • Rock exercise
• Reinvest in a Life Worth Living