Preventing Suicide: The Solution Focused Approach

Now revised and updated, Preventing Suicide: The Solution Focused Approach continues to garner widespread acclaim for offering a wealth of practical guidance to individual suicide prevention. With worldwide implications for the reduction of suicide rates, solution–focused brief therapy (SFBT) is a ground–breaking approach to helping those contemplating suicide find alternative solutions to their problems. Maintaining his accessible writing style for the widest possible audience, author John Henden shows practitioners how to help clients move quickly through and beyond the crisis which has prompted suicidal thinking and ideas. Presenting a stark departure from the current risk assessment, management, and medication approach to suicidal clients, Henden provides straightforward ways to deal frankly with the subject of suicide itself, along with a range of tools and techniques found to be immediately helpful to the client. 

About the author vii

Foreword ix

Acknowledgments xi

1 How to use this book 1

2 The book s style and purpose 4

3 Defining suicide and self injury 24

4 Current service provision: risk assessment, management and medication 32

5 Other approaches to helping the suicidal 49

6 What is Solution Focused Brief Therapy? 70

7 Suicide encounters: the crucial first ten minutes 112

8 The solution focused approach in working with the suicidal 123

9 Case study: Reg and the demons calling from the deep 152

10 Some more case vignettes 175

11 Connecting with people by Alys Cole–King 185

12 Working on the phone with the suicidal person 199

13 Blaming those who took their lives 208

14 International solution focused applications to suicide prevention 215

15 Zero suicide: should this be our goal? 245

16 Where do we go from here? 253

Appendix 1: Flow diagram for an episode of treatment 264

Appendix 2: Specialist solution focused training workshops 268

Appendix 3: Evidence base for solution focused working 270

References 278

Index 314

John Henden is Managing Director of the John Henden Consultancy and an internationally acclaimed trainer, author, therapist and performance coach. He has more than 40 years of experience working within mental health services as both a practitioner and manager.