04/09/2025
COUNSELLORS: When Supporting Clients Through Suicidal Ideation
👉 Essential guidance: https://youtu.be/k0q2G5cND8g
As counsellors and psychotherapists, encountering clients with suicidal thoughts isn't a matter of if - it's when. Yet many of us still feel unprepared for these crucial conversations.
Ken and Rory explore how to approach this challenging area with greater confidence and compassion:
Breaking the silence: Asking about su***de reduces risk, it doesn't increase it. Direct inquiry can provide relief and opens therapeutic opportunities.
Reframing risk: Moving beyond binary thinking to understand risk as fluid and relational, enabling more nuanced therapeutic responses whilst maintaining safety.
Collaborative safety planning: Developing empowering, client-led safety plans that focus on realistic actions and regular review, avoiding dependency or fear-based approaches.
Professional boundaries: Understanding your responsibility TO clients, not FOR their life decisions. You can hold space, ask direct questions, and be the person who sees them without carrying impossible burdens.
Warning signs that matter: Ken shares personal insights about recognising both obvious and subtle indicators, including the counterintuitive sign of sudden mood improvement after depression.
The therapeutic privilege: You might be the person who sees them, hears them, and wraps them in unconditional positive regard when they feel worthless and unheard.
Whether you're in training or highly experienced, the fear of "getting it wrong" often looms large. This guidance offers evidence-informed strategies to help you create therapeutic space where such conversations are not only possible, but potentially life-saving.
Important reminder: This video is intended as supportive guidance for reflective practice, not a replacement for formal training, supervision, or ongoing CPD.
