A relational approach to evaluating your suicidal clients. Given the isolating nature of suicidal ideation and actions, it’s all too easy for clinicians conducting a suicide assessment to find themselves developing tunnel vision, becoming overly focused on the client’s individual risk factors. Although critically important to explore, these risks and the danger they pose can’t be fully appreciated without considering them in relation to the person’s resources for safely negotiating a pathway through his or her desperation. And, in turn, these intrapersonal risks and resources must be understood in context—in relation to the interpersonal risks and resources contributed by the client’s significant others. In this book, Drs. Douglas Flemons and Leonard M. Gralnik, a family therapist and a psychiatrist, team up to provide a comprehensive relational approach to suicide assessment. The authors offer a Risk and Resource Interview Guide as a means of organizing assessment conversations with suicidal clients. Drawing on an extensive research literature, as well as their combined 50+ years of clinical experience, the authors distill relevant topics of inquiry arrayed within four domains of suicidal experience: disruptions and demands, suffering, troubling behaviors, and desperation. Knowing what questions to ask a suicidal client is essential, but it is just as important to know how to ask questions and how to join through empathic statements. Beyond this, clinicians need to know how to make safety decisions, how to construct safety plans, and what to include in case note documentation. In the final chapter, an annotated transcript serves to tie together the ideas and methods offered throughout the book. Relational Suicide Assessment provides the theoretical grounding, empirical data, and practical tools necessary for clinicians to feel prepared and confident when engaging in this most anxiety-provoking of clinical responsibilities.

A relational approach to evaluating your suicidal clients. Given the isolating nature of suicidal ideation and actions, it’s all too easy for clinicians conducting a suicide assessment to find themselves developing tunnel vision, becoming overly focused on the client’s individual risk factors. Although critically important to explore, these risks and the danger they pose can’t be fully appreciated without considering them in relation to the person’s resources for safely negotiating a pathway through his or her desperation. And, in turn, these intrapersonal risks and resources must be understood in context—in relation to the interpersonal risks and resources contributed by the client’s significant others. In this book, Drs. Douglas Flemons and Leonard M. Gralnik, a family therapist and a psychiatrist, team up to provide a comprehensive relational approach to suicide assessment. The authors offer a Risk and Resource Interview Guide as a means of organizing assessment conversations with suicidal clients. Drawing on an extensive research literature, as well as their combined 50+ years of clinical experience, the authors distill relevant topics of inquiry arrayed within four domains of suicidal experience: disruptions and demands, suffering, troubling behaviors, and desperation. Knowing what questions to ask a suicidal client is essential, but it is just as important to know how to ask questions and how to join through empathic statements. Beyond this, clinicians need to know how to make safety decisions, how to construct safety plans, and what to include in case note documentation. In the final chapter, an annotated transcript serves to tie together the ideas and methods offered throughout the book. Relational Suicide Assessment provides the theoretical grounding, empirical data, and practical tools necessary for clinicians to feel prepared and confident when engaging in this most anxiety-provoking of clinical responsibilities.

Assessing Risk: A Relational Approach offers the practitioner a novel framework for understanding the complex and subtle issues involved in assessing and managing risks related to violence and sexual offending. The authors draw on their considerable experience working with high risk individuals in assessment and treatment. They have for many years consulted to practitioners in forensic mental health services and the criminal justice system and taught renowned courses at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. This book outlines a comprehensive model of risk which draws on mainstream empirical research, threat assessment, developmental psychopathology, attachment theory, and a relational model derived from psychoanalysis. The framework incorporates intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions and is designed to enhance the reader’s capacity to make a thorough risk formulation. The approach highlights the significance of childhood development in understanding violent and sexually violent acts, and the complicated interpersonal processes involved in managing individuals who have a propensity to violent enactment. These dynamic processes between people impact on risk and risk perception, and can distort judgement if not recognised and understood. Assessing Risk will be of practical use in enhancing the skills of professionals to assess and manage risk in a comprehensive and effective way, and will appeal to all those mental health and criminal justice practitioners working with risky individuals.

Grounded in decades of influential research, this book thoroughly examines perfectionism: how it develops, its underlying mechanisms and psychological costs, and how to target it effectively in psychotherapy. The authors describe how perfectionistic tendencies--rooted in early relational and developmental experiences--make people vulnerable to a wide range of clinical problems. They present an integrative treatment approach and demonstrate ways to tailor interventions to the needs of individual clients. A group treatment model is also detailed. State-of-the-art assessment tools are discussed (and provided at the companion website). Throughout the book, vivid clinical illustrations make the core ideas and techniques concrete.ÿ ÿ

THE CALL OF DARKNESS: A Relational Listening Approach to Suicide InterventionThe White House has declared suicide to be a national and international epidemic and has mandated suicide prevention training for educational and health workers nationwide. The Call of Darkness was written in response to that mandate and begins with the awareness that our ability to predict suicide is little better than chance and that at present there are no consistently reliable empirically validated treatment techniques to prevent suicide. However, in the past three decades much has been learned about the dynamics of suicide and promising treatment approaches have been advanced that are slowly yielding clinical as well as empirical results.In this book, Dr. Hedges presents the groundbreaking work on suicidality of Freud, Jung, Menninger and Shneidman as well as the more recent work of Linehan, Kernberg, Joiner and the attachment theorists along with the features in common that these treatment approaches seem to share. He puts forth a Relational Listening approach regarding the origins of suicidality in a relational/developmental context and will consider their implications for treating, and managing suicidality. The tendencies towards blame and self-blame on the part of survivors raise issues of professional responsibility. Dr Hedges discusses accurate assessment, thorough documentation, appropriate standards of care, and liability management (402 pgs).

This practical guide provides a holistic, wellness-oriented approach to understanding suicide and working effectively with clients who are suicidal. John and Rita Sommers-Flanagans’ culturally sensitive, seven-dimension model offers new ways to collaboratively integrate solution-focused and strengths-based strategies into clinical interactions and treatment planning with children, adolescents, and adults. Each chapter contains diverse case studies and key practitioner guidance points to deepen learning in addition to a wellness practice intervention to elevate mood. Personal and professional self-care and emotional preparation techniques are emphasized, as are ethical issues, counselor competencies, and clinically nuanced skill building. *Requests for digital versions from ACA can be found on www.wiley.com. *To purchase print copies, please visit the ACA website *Reproduction requests for material from books published by ACA should be directed to [email protected].

1. Come Again? From Possibility Therapy to Sex Therapy; 2. Multicontextual Sex Therapy with Lesbian Couples; 3. Getting "In the Mood" (For a Change): Stage-Appropriate Clinical Work for Sexual Problems; 4. Shining Light on Intimacy and Sexual Pleasure; 5. Premature Ejaculation of "Sexual Addiction" Diagnoses; 6. Out of My Office and Into the Bedroom; 7. Unique Problems, Unique Resolutions: Brief Treatment of Sexual Complaints; 8. Just Between Us: A Relational Approach to Sex Therapy; 9. Who Really Wants to Sleep With the Medical Model? An Eclectic / Narrative Approach to Sex Therapy; 10. How Do Therapists of Same-Sex Couples "Do It"?; 11. A Catalytic Approach to Brief Sex Therapy; 12. Don't Get Too Bloody Optimistic - John Weakland at Work; 13. Transforming Stories: A Contextual Approach to Treating Sexual Offenders; 14. Re-Membering the Self: A Relational Approach to Sexual Abuse Treatment.