Suicide is the most fatal and urgent topic in all of mental health. And it’s no wonder licensing jurisdictions require a certain number of continuing education credits (CEs) be done on suicide risk assessment and treatment.
Suicide assessment and treatment can be tricky and highly stressful. It gets even more stressful considering that studies have found that we are less effective at assessing suicide risk than we might expect. Some of our tools to prevent suicide also appear less effective than we would hope (e.g., suicide contracts). The good news is that we have great people working to continue to understand suicide and how we can improve our approach to it.
More good news is that there are ways to learn these latest approaches. Concept Palo Alto has created a good continuing education training with a few of those clinicians and researchers working to understand suicide. This training emphasizes solid foundations based on research findings mixed with humanistic approaches. The training helps make a difficult task less uncertain and less stressful for you and for your client. A number of books on suicide risk and treatment are also available.
Pros: Great presenters who have really “been in it” when it comes to suicide assessment, treatment, and research. This CE training also emphasizes approaches and pitfalls to suicide over tele-mental health. So it’s highly consistent with modern counseling approaches. It’s also an on-demand training, so you can take it at your convenience.
Limits: Nothing is perfect. So this training won’t guarantee that discussing suicide with your client will not be stressful. It also can’t gaurantee 100% prevention rate, but no training can (this one does provide some solid tools!). Note, it’s on-demand so it cannot go toward live CE hours allotment.
Suicide is a tough topic. We’ve all gotta jump in though! Concept’s continuing education on suicide assessment and treatment over telemental health can give those key updates and refreshers to help those clients who really need us when their basic survival is on the line.
