Expired Youth Suicide Risk Management: Risk Assessment, Safety Planning, and Family Engagement

How often do adolescent patients unexpectedly reveal their suicidal thoughts or intentions in the middle of a session?  How often do we get a call from schools saying they found a suicide note in an adolescent’s book bag?  Learning some practical, state of the art, empirically supported clinical strategies to manage a youth suicide crisis can improve clinical decision making and ethical practice.

In this workshop, Dr. Guy Diamond and Dr. Suzanne Levy will review procedures and assessment tools for conducting suicide risk assessments. Participants will learn how to generate a safety plan and how and when to involve parents/caregivers in the process.  Based on attachment-based family therapy, specific clinical strategies for engaging resistant parents and reducing barriers to help-seeking will be explored.

Learning Objectives:

• List the important aspects of a risk assessment
• Explain the importance of a family generated safety plan
• Explain the barriers to engaging families in treatment

Presenters:

Guy S. Diamond, PhD, is the Director/Chair of the Center for Family Intervention Science and the ABFT Training Program at Drexel University.  Dr. Diamond is an Associate Professor at Drexel University, Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and the former director of the Couple and Family Therapy PhD Program at Drexel University.

Suzanne A. Levy, PhD, is the Training Director at the ABFT Training Program in the Center for Family Intervention Science at Drexel University.  Dr. Levy is a former adjunct professor at Drexel University, former Training Director of the Center for Family Intervention Science at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, former staff psychologist, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and former independent contractor, Penn Resiliency Program, University of Pennsylvania.