Last week I did a little cliff-jumping into the Stillwater River with my twin 13-year-old grandchildren. It was only about 20 feet, but high enough to feel the terror and exhilaration of a brief free-fall.

This week I’m having a different kind of buzz. Dr. Margaret Rutherford reached out to me with a link to her TEDx Boca Raton talk. Previously I was a guest on her video podcast show (here’s the link to her podcast page: https://drmargaretrutherford.com/podcast-2-2/, and a link to her website and book, “Perfectly Hidden Depression” https://drmargaretrutherford.com/perfectlyhiddendepressionbook/). We’ve stayed in touch via email. Along with her link, she apologetically noted that she “barely” got a plug in for my work on strengths-based suicide assessment. I thought it was incredibly nice for her to give a nod, even a brief one, to my work. But then I watched and discovered that she had only mentioned three professionals: Edwin Shneidman (the “Father of Suicidology), Sidney Blatt (a renowned suicide and depression researcher from Yale), and some obscure guy from the University of Montana (that would be me).

Aside from feeling honored, humbled, and flattered to even get a mention, Dr. Margaret’s talk is fantastic. She makes the point–with a couple of articulate cases–for moving away from a strictly medical model perspective and toward working with people who may be suicidal through a lens of no judgment and acceptance. Here’s the link to her talk, which is well-worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXZ5Bo5lafA

There are other signs that how professionals (and hopefully the public) view suicidal ideation and behavior may be shifting toward greater acceptance. I’ll go into these other signs in a future post, but right now I want to emphasize that the point is not to replace the medical model, but to move the needle toward less pathologizing and more acceptance of the fact that having suicidal thoughts is often a normal part of life. To the extent that we can approach people who are thinking about suicide with, as Dr. Margaret said, “non-judgment and acceptance,” the more likely they are to be open with us about their pain. . . and . . . when people are open about their pain and suffering, then we have a chance to listen with empathy and a greater opportunity to be of help. . . which, I think, is the main point.