While hanging out on Twitter, I noticed that E. David Klonsky, a fancy suicide researcher from the University of British Columbia tweeted about a brand new article published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

The article, titled, “Rethinking suicides as mental accidents” makes a case for what the authors (Drs Ajdacic-Grossab, Hepp, Seifritz, and Bopp from Switzerland) refer to as the starting point for a “Rethink.”

Aside from their very cool use of the term rethink—a term I’m planning to adopt and overuse in the future—the authors’ particular “rethink” has to do with reformulating completed suicides as mental accidents, instead of mental illness. They concluded, “The mental accident paradigm provides an interdisciplinary starting point in suicidology that offers new perspectives in research, prediction and prevention” (p. 141).

For those of you who follow this blog and know me a bit, it will come as no surprise that I commend the authors for moving away from the term mental illness, but that I also think they should move even further away from even the scent of pathologizing suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

All this brings me to an important announcement.

Starting on the evening of May 16 and continuing onto May 17, in partnership with the Big Sky Youth Empowerment Project (thanks Pete and Katie), I’ll begin the launch of some public and professional suicide trainings in Montana. These trainings will include evening public lectures (starting May 16 in Bozeman) and professional trainings on suicide assessment and treatment planning (starting May 17 in Bozeman).

Going back to the “rethink” of suicide as a mental accident, I want to emphasize that my goal with these lectures and workshops is to reshape discussions about suicide from illness-focused to health and wellness focused. Rethink of it as a strength-based approach to suicide assessment and treatment planning. And you can also rethink of it as no accident.

For more information on the public lecture, check out this flyer: BYEPSAWpublic (1)

For more information on the professional suicide assessment and treatment planning workshop, check out this link: https://go.byep.org/advances and flyer: BYEPSAWclinical (1)

And if you can’t make these events, no worries, as I mentioned, this is a launch . . . which means there’s more coming later this year . . . in Billings, in Great Falls, and in Missoula.

Finally, if you want a workshop like this in your city, let me know. The good people of Big Sky Youth Empowerment are committed to delivering a more positive message about suicide assessment and treatment planning to other locations around the state; maybe we can partner up and do some important work together.

Thanks for reading and happy Sunday evening!