Hope in Action

Book excerpt: Respectful and effective solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) for suicidal clients Few tasks are more important—and daunting—than to help someone who is suicidal to go beyond the darkness of hopelessness to the light of hope. Hope in Action: Solution-Focused Conversations About Suicide is a unique resource providing fresh approaches to treating individuals and families where suicide is an issue. This comprehensive book provides a thorough grounding in using a solution-focused therapy approach to elicit and reinforce hope and reasons for living. Strategies are demonstrated with stories, case vignettes, and transcripts. Special applications include some of the most challenging high-risk clients that therapists treat, including people who make repeated attempts. This powerful resource offers a set of practice principles based on the existing empirical evidence in the context of clinical utility and client expertise. Hope in Action: Solution-Focused Conversations About Suicide provides case transcripts to help in role-play or rehearsal situations as well as numerous practical tips. The book also provides lists of solution-focused questions for use in various situations, including suicide crisis, the use of anti-depressant medications, facilitation of collaborative working relationships with colleagues as well as clients. Each application chapter gives therapists practical, hands-on tools and uses stories and illustrations to make the book user-friendly. The text also offers a brief appendix on the basic skills of SFBT. Topics discussed in Hope in Action: Solution-Focused Conversations About Suicide include: current knowledge about preventing suicide at the individual level helping clients to utilize their strengths even when they are in crisis how research in diverse areas supports the solution-focused approach effective treatment for couples and families when one member is suicidal basic approaches to effective therapy with young children and teens who have attempted suicide respectful, effective therapy with people who seem to have adopted being suicidal as their primary coping strategy therapeutic tools that help the therapist to stay hopeful about clients and strengthen the therapeutic relationship Hope in Action: Solution-Focused Conversations About Suicide is a valuable resource for counselors and therapists at every experience level.