As you probably know, suicide rates are and have been on the rise. Here’s what the Centers for Disease Control said several months ago: “From 1999 through 2017, the age-adjusted suicide rate increased 33% from 10.5 to 14.0 per 100,000” (CDC, November, 2018).

Although the CDC’s report of a 33% increase in the national suicide rate is discouraging, the raw numbers are even worse. In 1999, an estimated 29,180 Americans died by suicide. As a comparison, in 2017 (the latest year for which data are available), there were 47,173 suicide deaths. This represents a 61.9% rise in the raw number of suicide deaths over the past 17 years.

Along with rising suicide rates, there’s also a palpable rise in anxiety and panic among mental health and healthcare professionals, teachers, and the public. Even though suicides still occur at a low rate (14 per 100,000), it’s beginning to feel like a public health crisis. We don’t have much evidence that current intervention and prevention efforts are working, and the continued tragic outcomes (about 129 suicide deaths each day in the U.S.) are painful and frustrating.

The purpose of this post is simply to offer resources. I’ve been working in this area for many years; my sense is that having additional resources to help professionals feel more competent can reduce anxiety and probably increases competence. Here are some resources that might be helpful.

1. In 2017, I published an article on suicide assessment in Professional Psychology. Here’s a pdf of that: SF and Shaw Suicide 2017.  In 2018 I published an article in the Journal of Health Service Psychology. The purpose of the 2018 article was to be more practical and provide clear ideas about how psychological providers can be more effective in how they work with clients or patients who are suicidal. You can click here to access a pdf of the article. Conversations About Suicide by JSF 2018
2. I’ve been working with some of my doctoral students on alternatives to the traditional (and failed) approach of using client risk factors to categorize or estimate suicide risk. One product of this work is an evidence-based list of eight potential suicide dimensions. These suicide dimensions can be used with other models (e.g., safety planning) to guide collaborative treatment planning. To see a description of the eight dimensions and a treatment planning form based on the eight dimensions, you can click on the following links. Suicide TPlanning Handout            Suicide TPlanning Handout Blank
3. Barbara Stanley and Gregory Brown developed the “Safety Planning Intervention.” For information about their intervention and access to their safety planning form, you can go to their website: http://suicidesafetyplan.com/Home_Page.html
4. Along with Victor Yalom and some other contributors, this past year I helped produce a 7.5 hour professional training video titled, Assessment and Intervention with Suicidal Clients. You can buy this 3-part video series through Psychotherapy.net and can access a preview of the video series here: http://www.psychotherapy.net/video/suicidal-clients-series
5. I’m a big fan of David Jobes’s work on the collaborative assessment and management of suicide. You can check out his book on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Suicidal-Risk-Second-Collaborative/dp/146252690X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=29DN6ZM2BUCV3&keywords=david+jobes+suicide&qid=1551837394&s=gateway&sprefix=david+jobes%2Caps%2C177&sr=8-1
6. Later this spring and this fall, in collaboration with the Big Sky Youth Empowerment Program and the University of Montana, I’ll be offering several low-cost six-hour training workshops in four different Montana locations. These trainings will include research data collection, as well as an opportunity to participate in follow up booster trainings—booster sessions that will happen about three months after you attend an initial six-hour session. If you’re interested in participating in these Montana Suicide Assessment and Treatment Planning Workshops, you can email me, send me your email via a comment on this blog, or begin following this blog so you don’t miss out when I share the dates, times, and locations, and registration information in an upcoming post.

I hope this information is helpful to you in your work with clients struggling with suicide. Together, hopefully we can make a difference.