Hope in Action Solution Focused Conversations About Suicide

This title presents respectful and effective solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) for suicidal clients. Few tasks are more important - and daunting - than to help someone who is suicidal to go beyond the darkness of hopelessness to the light of hope. "Hope in Action: Solution-Focused Conversations About Suicide" is a unique resource providing fresh approaches to treating individuals and families where suicide is an issue.

This comprehensive book provides a thorough grounding in using a solution-focused therapy approach to elicit and reinforce hope and reasons for living. Strategies are demonstrated with stories, case vignettes, and transcripts. Special applications include some of the most challenging high-risk clients that therapists treat, including people who make repeated attempts. This powerful resource offers a set of practice principles based on the existing empirical evidence in the context of clinical utility and client expertise. "Hope in Action: Solution-Focused Conversations About Suicide" provides case transcripts to help in role-play or rehearsal situations as well as numerous practical tips. The book also provides lists of solution-focused questions for use in various situations, including suicide crisis, the use of anti-depressant medications, and facilitation of collaborative working relationships with colleagues as well as clients. Each application chapter gives therapists practical, hands-on tools and uses stories and illustrations to make the book user-friendly. The text also offers a brief appendix on the basic skills of SFBT. Topics discussed in "Hope in Action: Solution-Focused Conversations About Suicide" include: current knowledge about preventing suicide at the individual level; helping clients to utilize their strengths even when they are in crisis; how research in diverse areas supports the solution-focused approach; effective treatment for couples and families when one member is suicidal; basic approaches to effective therapy with young children and teens who have attempted suicide; respectful, effective therapy with people who seem to have adopted being suicidal as their primary coping strategy; and, therapeutic tools that help the therapist to stay hopeful about clients and strengthen the therapeutic relationship. This book is a valuable resource for counsellors and therapists at every experience level.