Suicide and self-harm are world-wide public health issues that can have devastating effects on families, friends and communities. They are both a priority for anyone working in mental health, social work, emergency departments and related fields, however suicidal and self-harming behaviour can take place anywhere anytime - it may be a pupil in a school, an inmate in a prison or a colleague or family member. For this reason, this book has been written in a clear, accessible and practical style for anyone who wants to learn more about working with and preventing suicidal and self-harming behaviour. - It identifies common risk and protective factors as well as specific warning signs of imminent suicidal behaviour - It provides essential communication skills for undertaking a risk assessment, illustrating how each skill can be used in real-life practice. - It looks specifically at the issue of self-harm and suicide in prisons, schools and emergency departments - It lays out clear strategies for identifying and addressing issues of self-care when working with people who are suicidal or who self-harm - It identifies how we can assist those who are bereaved following the death of a loved one by suicide Packed with learning outcomes, case scenarios and reflective questions, this book acts as a toolkit for anyone working in this difficult field.

Alessandra Lemma - Winner of the Levy-Goldfarb Award for Child Psychoanalysis! Relating to Self-Harm and Suicide presents original studies and research from contemporary psychoanalysts, therapists and academics focusing on the psychoanalytic understanding of suicide and self-harm, and how this can be applied to clinical work and policy. This powerful critique of current thinking suggests that suicide and self-harm must be understood as having meaning within interpersonal and intrapsychic relationships, offering a new and more hopeful dimension for prevention and recovery. Divided into three sections, the book includes: a theoretical overview examples of psychoanalytic practice with self-harming and suicidal patients applications of psychoanalytic thinking to suicide and self-harm prevention. Relating to Self-Harm and Suicide will be helpful to psychoanalytic therapists, analysts and mental health professionals wanting to integrate psychoanalytic ideas into their work with self-harmers and the suicidal. This text will also be of use to academics and professionals involved in suicidal prevention.

Grounded in a wellness, strengths-based, and developmental perspective, Non-Suicidal Self-Injury is the ideal guide for counselors and other clinicians seeking to understand self-injurious behaviors without pathologizing them. The book covers topics not previously discussed in other works, including working with families, supervising counselors working with clients who self-injure, DSM-5 criteria regarding the NSSI diagnosis, NSSI as a protective factor for preventing suicidal behavior, and advocacy efforts around NSSI. In each chapter clinicians will also find concrete tools, including questions to ask, psychoeducational handouts for clients and their families, treatment handouts or treatment plans for counselors, and more. Non-Suicidal Self-Injury also includes real-life voices of individuals who self-injure as well as case vignettes to provide examples of how theoretical models or treatments discussed in this book immediately apply to practice.

Suicide is a perplexing human behavior that remains among the leading causes of death worldwide, responsible for more deaths each year than all wars, genocide, and homicide combined. Although suicide and other forms of self-injury have baffled scholars and clinicians for thousands of years, the past few decades have brought significant leaps in our understanding of these behaviors. This volume provides a comprehensive summary of the most important and exciting advances in our understanding of suicide and self-injury and our ability to predict and prevent it. Comprised of a formidable who's who in the field, the handbook covers the full spectrum of topics in suicide and self-injury across the lifespan, including the classification of different self-injurious behaviors, epidemiology, assessment techniques, and intervention. Chapters probe relevant issues in our society surrounding suicide, including assisted suicide and euthanasia, suicide terrorism, overlap between suicidal behavior and interpersonal violence, ethical considerations for suicide researchers, and current knowledge on survivors of suicide. The most comprehensive handbook on suicide and self-injury to date, this volume is a must-read text for graduate students, fellows, academic and research psychologists, and other researchers working in the brain and behavioral sciences.