Family Based Youth Suicide Risk Management Workshop

Course Description

This workshop provides an introduction to state of the art, empirically supported family based suicide risk management practices to help therapists and clinical staff manage suicide concerns when they arise.

First, we discuss trauma informed care, adolescent and family development and the national concern about adolescent suicide risk. Then we teach a family-centered care approach to risk assessment and safety planning. Finally, we teach strategies for engaging families into the treatment process and how to conduct a first family session. Lecture, discussion, experiential exercises, and therapy videos are used throughout the workshop.

Course Components:

Risk Assessment
We review the essential procedures of suicide risk assessment We provide a framework for thinking about when to do a risk assessment, who to involve, and how much information caregivers need to know. We discuss several standardized measures for therapists to assess suicide risk and how to document this information to protect confidentiality, yet maintain an ethical practice. Therapists need to know the critical risk factors and warning signs to facilitate a state of the art risk assessment. Family risk and protective factors are reviewed to help therapists evaluate if adolescents can remain at home. Finally, the decision making process of what level of care is needed to match the level of risk is reviewed. Participants are given the opportunity to practice these risk assessment skills.

Safety Planning
Safety planning has become an essential tool for helping patients manage their suicidal thoughts. We will review our family based approach to developing and using a safety plan. Caregiver involvement from the beginning can help promote the family as a foundation of safety and comfort, a powerful protective factor for troubled youth. The safety plan becomes a mutual conversation where caregivers learn how to listen and support their adolescent to identify who some basic coping and social support strategies. The caregivers also develop their own safety plan guidelines that improve how they interact with the adolescent when stress emerges. In this way, the safety plan becomes a tool to help caregivers manage their own anxiety, a critical goal in a family based suicide treatment approach. Role play provides an opportunity for workshop participants to practice a complex multi person safety plan process.

Family Engagement
Caregivers serve as the gatekeepers for adolescents receiving mental health services. Adolescent do not take themselves to therapy; caregivers bring them. Unfortunately, many caregivers and adolescents present with barriers to services utilization. Logistical barriers are real and need to be solved. However, psychological barriers often serve as the bigger challenge. Families may not trust therapists, may want to keep family problems private, may have negative experience with mental health services, and may feel stigma and shame about attending services. We discuss how to anticipate these challenges and bring them into conversations during the assessment phase. Then we review strategies for engaging caregivers and youth into the therapy process itself; the first challenge for any family based therapy. Clinical protocols, video examples and role play help the participate understand and practice these skills.

At the completion of the workshop participants should be able to:

• List the important aspects of a risk assessment.
• Explain importance of a family generated safety plan.
• Explain the barriers to engaging families in treatment.
• Describe the decision making process of what level of care is needed to match the level of risk.
• Describe strategies for dealing with family resistance to treatment.