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Suicide Assessment & Treatment: Identifying Risks and Aligning for Safety

Trends indicate that almost every mental health professional will work with a suicidal person. Working with suicidal clients continues to be rated as one of the most stressful and most feared aspects of the job of a clinician, partly because training in how to effectively treat a suicidal person is lacking in most graduate programs. This workshop will strengthen confidence and improve foundational skills for both assessing, conceptualizing, managing, and treating suicide risk. Video clips, group discussions, role plays, and information sharing will bring this topic to life, and leave you with strategies you can implement the very next day in your practice.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe common dilemmas and core competencies of best practice suicide risk assessment and management
2. Identify and use suicide assessment techniques that improve the validity of the information obtained and facilitate rapport building
3. Distinguish between suicide risk factors, warning signs, and suicide drivers, and integrate these elements into a treatment-enhancing suicide risk formulation
4. Utilize evidence-based safety planning that integrates technological support for out-of-session coping and aligns with the risk formulation
5. Describe therapeutic strategies and monitoring tools for directly targeting suicidality

About the Presenter:

Jennifer Muehlenkamp, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She is a recognized expert in the field of Suicidology, having published over 100 empirical papers, book chapters, and co-authored books on topics related to suicide risk, prevention, and self-injury. Dr. Muehlenkamp is trained in evidence-based therapies for suicidal behavior (e.g., DBT, CAMS, AMSR, CBT), regularly consults and provides workshops on topics related to suicide/ self-injury, and received honors from the American Association of Suicidology for her professional contributions. She is currently the president of the International Society for the Study of Self-Injury, is the director of the UW-Eau Claire Suicide Prevention and Research Collaborative (SPARC), and is a member of the steering committee for Prevent Suicide.

CE: Participants attending a full training will receive a certificate at the end of the training day for 6.0 CE hours. More information on CE qualification.