VIDEO: Consider family’s role, personal mental health when working with suicidal youth

Key takeaways:

• Your approach to working with suicidal youth should consider your goals, who you see as your client and what resources you use.
• Make sure you address your own mental health when working with suicidal youth.

For Mental Health Awareness Month, Jonathan B. Singer, PhD, LCSW, discussed his advice for working with suicidal youth and their families.

“I think one of the most amazing things about working with suicidal youth and their families is that you tend to folks at one of their lowest points; and for most kids, in a fairly short period of time you get to see some improvement,” Singer, a professor of social work at Loyola University Chicago, told Healio. “They go from being in this terrible place to a better place, and that’s really inspiring.”

According to Singer, it is important to evaluate your goals when working with someone who is suicidal, whether it be keeping the patient alive, identifying things that motivate the patient to stay alive or something else. He also emphasized the role of the family.

“I draw from attachment-based family therapy, which says that there might be many reasons why a kid is suicidal, but one of the best solutions is the family [and] a strong relationship with the parents,” Singer said. “So, one of the places of hope is improving the relationship between the parent and the child.”

Singer also highlighted that, as a health care professional, you have other resources to help you support suicidal patients and their families. These might include the systems in which the families you work with are involved, such as the legal and school system.

“As I always tell students, when you’re working with somebody who’s suicidal, nobody expects you to do it alone,” he said. “You can be the chief attending at the best medical center in the world, and you’re not going to sign off on a suicide risk assessment without consulting with at least one other person.”

Other supports available to help providers include personal mental health resources, such as those available through a provider’s institution, Singer said.

In this video, Singer elaborates on approaches to supporting suicidal youth and how to address your own mental health as you do so.