Adolescent Suicide And Self Injury

This volume presents a comprehensive and practical approach to the treatment of suicide and NSSI for adolescents utilizing a mentalizing framework. The beginning of the text provides up-to-date information on the theory of a mentalizing therapy in order to ground the readers in the neuroscientific underpinnings of a mentalizing approach. Next chapters provide information on the fundamental building blocks of a mentalizing therapy at the individual and family level. These chapters provide step-by-step approaches in order to provide examples of the techniques involved in mentalizing treatment that can be employed to address suicidality and NSSI. The next chapter builds on these concepts as the reader learns about mentalizing failures involved in common co-morbidities in adolescents who are experiencing suicidality and/or employing NSSI. The next several chapters cover practical issues related to working within this patient population including the key concept of social systems and connections for both providers and adolescents, the ability of mentalizing theory and therapy to integrate with other effective therapies, how to approach sessions after a suicide attempt, resiliency for patient, family and the provider, along with important self-care for a therapist if a patient commits suicide. The final chapter brings all of the aforementioned elements together in order for the reader to conceptualize employing a mentalizing approach to adolescents and their families when suicide and NSSI concerns are a predominate focus of care. Illustrations of specific therapeutic approaches and a list of resources and guidelines where available are also included. Adolescent Suicide and Self-Injury is an excellent resource for all clinicians working with youths at risk for suicide and/or self-injury, including psychiatrists, psychologists, pediatricians, family medicine physicians, emergency medicine specialists, social workers, and all others.

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a baffling, troubling, and hard to treat phenomenon that has increased markedly in recent years. Key issues in diagnosing and treating NSSI adequately include differentiating it from attempted suicide and other mental disorders, as well as understanding the motivations for self-injury and the context in which it occurs. This accessible and practical book provides therapists and students with a clear understanding of these key issues, as well as of suitable assessment techniques. It then goes on to delineate research-informed treatment approaches for NSSI, with an emphasis on functional assessment, emotion regulation, and problem solving, including motivational interviewing, interpersonal skills, CBT, DBT, behavioral management strategies, delay behaviors, exercise, family therapy, risk management, and medication, as well as how to successfully combine methods.

Self-harm in adolescence and late teens is known to be increasing, though it is difficult to detect and inconsistently recorded. This thorough, practical and evidence-based book provides guidance for professionals and parents caring for children and young people at risk of self-harm and suicide. Claudine Fox and Keith Hawton discuss risk factors for self-harm, including depression, substance abuse and antisocial behaviour, and critically examine key screening instruments that can be used to assess risk. They describe how suicidal behaviour can be managed and prevented, and look at the effectiveness of aftercare treatment for those who self-harm, including school-based suicide-prevention programs and family therapy. Also addressed are common myths about self-harm and the problem of varying definitions in this field. Deliberate Self-Harm in Adolescence clearly summarizes and evaluates current research into suicidal behaviour - it is essential reading for social workers, mental health professionals, GPs, teachers and parents.

Offering a new way of understanding the high self-harm and suicide rates among sexual and gender minority youth, this book prioritises the perspectives and experiences of queer young people, including those who have experience of self-harming and/or feeling suicidal. Presenting analysis based on research carried out with young people both online and face-to-face, the authors offer a critical perspective on the role of norms, namely developmental norms, gender and sexuality norms, and neoliberal norms, in the production of self-harming and suicidal youth. Queer Youth, Suicide and Self-Harm is unique in the way it works at the intersection of class and sexuality, and in its specific focus on transgender youth and the concept of embodied distress. It also examines the implications of this research for self-harm reduction and suicide prevention.

The authors identify the risk and protective factors for self-harm, exploring why some adolescents with suicidal thoughts go on to harm themselves while others do not, what motivates some young people to seek help, and whether distressed teenagers feel they receive the support they need.

"Picturing myself dying in a way I choose myself seems so comforting, healing and heroic. I'd look at my wrists, watch the blood seeping, and be a spectator in my last act of self-determination. By having lost all my self-respect it seems like the last pride I own, determining the time I die."-Kyra V., seventeen Reading the confessions of a teenager contemplating suicide is uncomfortable, but we must do so to understand why self-harm has become epidemic, especially in the United States. What drives teenagers to self-harm? What makes death so attractive, so liberating, and so inevitable for so many? In Teenage Suicide Notes, sociologist Terry Williams pores over the writings of a diverse group of troubled youths to better grasp the motivations behind teenage suicide and to humanize those at risk of taking their own lives. Williams evaluates young people in rural and urban contexts and across lines of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. His approach, which combines sensitive portrayals with sociological analysis, adds a clarifying dimension to the fickle and often frustrating behavior of adolescents. Williams reads between the lines of his subjects' seemingly straightforward reflections on alienation, agency, euphoria, and loss, and investigates how this cocktail of emotions can lead to suicide—or not. Rather than treating these notes as exceptional examples of self-expression, Williams situates them at the center of teenage life, linking them to abuse, violence, depression, anxiety, religion, peer pressure, sexual identity, and family dynamics. He captures the currents that turn self-destruction into an act of self-determination and proposes more effective solutions to resolving the suicide crisis.

This edited volume features evidence-based reviews and practical approaches for the professional in the hospital, clinic, community and school, with case examples throughout. Divided into five major sections, the book offers background historical and cultural information, discussion of self-injury etiology, assessment and intervention/prevention issues, and relevant resources for those working with youths who self-injure.

Suicide is a perplexing human behavior that remains among the leading causes of death worldwide, responsible for more deaths each year than all wars, genocide, and homicide combined. Although suicide and other forms of self-injury have baffled scholars and clinicians for thousands of years, the past few decades have brought significant leaps in our understanding of these behaviors. This volume provides a comprehensive summary of the most important and exciting advances in our understanding of suicide and self-injury and our ability to predict and prevent it. Comprised of a formidable who's who in the field, the handbook covers the full spectrum of topics in suicide and self-injury across the lifespan, including the classification of different self-injurious behaviors, epidemiology, assessment techniques, and intervention. Chapters probe relevant issues in our society surrounding suicide, including assisted suicide and euthanasia, suicide terrorism, overlap between suicidal behavior and interpersonal violence, ethical considerations for suicide researchers, and current knowledge on survivors of suicide. The most comprehensive handbook on suicide and self-injury to date, this volume is a must-read text for graduate students, fellows, academic and research psychologists, and other researchers working in the brain and behavioral sciences.