Sitting with Clients at the Edge : Strategies to Stay Grounded in Suicide Assessment and Safety Planning Practice

PRESENTED BY:    

Sophie Liljedahl, Ph.D., Psychologist

OVERVIEW

Most therapists are familiar with the basics of assessment of suicidality in the context of their clinical practice. However, prevention work goes far beyond checklists. Sitting with a client in distress, naming thoughts of death and wishes for dying, validating emotional pain, while planting seeds of hope and cultivating willingness to try new strategies by co-creating a safety plan can be profoundly difficult and rewarding. Many clinicians feel unsure, anxious, and even scared in these moments. Even when they have a sense of what they

“should” do, striking the right balance between acceptance and change can be a practice worth developing for greater ease and comfort.

This one-day interactive workshop offers grounding, clarity, a suicide assessment and safety planning protocol, which results in increased confidence to meet the challenge of suicidal clients in private practice. You will learn how to implement a Safety-Planning-Type Interventions (SPTI) while staying emotionally present, attuned, and collaborative. These types of intervention have been shown by recent meta-analysis to reduce suicidal behaviors by 43%.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Sophie I. Liljedahl is an Associate Professor in Psychiatry at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry, Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy. She serves as Lead, Clinical Research for both the National Medical Care Unit for Severe Self-Harm Behaviour (AVD369) and The Centre for Personality Disorders (MPS) in Gothenburg, Sweden. Sophie completed her undergraduate, doctorate and post-doctoral training in Ontario, Canada where she remains a licensed clinical psychologist.

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