Learning Center

Suicide challenges even the most seasoned mental health professional. In this richly instructive and deeply moving three-volume series, John Sommers-Flanagan and colleagues demonstrate invaluable assessment and treatment skills for working with diverse clients along the spectrum of suicidality.

How has the rapid shift to online therapy affected the way we work with suicidal clients? Victor Yalom and John Sommers-Flanagan discuss how to effectively engage, assess and monitor suicidal clients in the age of online therapy and the impact that COVID has had on suicidality.

Discover how incorporating a simple but powerful mood scale will advance your competence and confidence working with suicidal clients, and can open the door to rich, meaningful conversations about suicide.

Learn skills for building an effective safety plan with your suicidal clients that includes the creation of a safe environment, recognizing warning signs, identifying peer and community resources, and choosing an alternative environment.

How can you stay centered while supporting clients through periods of extreme reactivity and self-harm? In this video with Drs. Shelley McMain and Carmen Wiebe, learn to apply key tools from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to work with emotional dysregulation.

When a suicidal client is sitting across from you, how do you assess risk, negotiate no-harm agreements, and manage borderline reactivity while keeping your seat? In these riveting live demonstrations with DBT originator Marsha Linehan, learn essential strategies for working with distressed clients.

In this final installment of our comprehensive Three Approaches to Personality Disorders video series, watch renowned CBT expert Art Freeman assess cognitive schemas and set concrete therapeutic goals for Alfred, a challenging client who demonstrates significant Axis II issues and suicidal inclinations after being left by his girlfriend.

Learn to use Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) from the man who developed the method in a therapy session with Roseanne, whose husband committed suicide in front of her and her baby daughter ten years ago. 

Learn the critical skills necessary for assessing and helping suicidal clients in this excellent video.

This excellent training tool is a must-see for clinicians and non-clinicians alike who deal with students every day, providing step-by-step strategies and clear instructions to address suicidal behavior in teens.

Watch Kay Redfield Jamison, bestselling author of An Unquiet Mind and international expert on bipolar disorder, in this informative and intriguing interview that presents essential information on assessment and treatment of bipolar disorder in psychotherapy.

Psychiatrist and social critic Thomas Szasz unsettled the psychiatric establishment in the 1960’s, challenging its foundational notions around normalcy, mental illness and treatment. By watching this pair of riveting interviews, Dr. Szasz will challenge you to explore and question your own cherished beliefs around diagnosis, psychotherapy and freedom; deepening your empathy for even the most challenging clients.

A powerful psychoeducation video for public presentations and training events featuring leading experts as well as survivors of serious suicide attempts.

Prepare to be riveted by these live demonstrations with DBT originator Marsha Linehan. From assessing suicidality to negotiating no-harm agreements to maintaining a grounded stance, the formidable clinician offers effective strategies for working with distressed borderline clients.

Prepare to be enthralled in these riveting live demonstrations with Dr. Marsha Linehan, creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy. From assessing negotiating no-harm agreements to conducting a chain analysis and problem solving techniques, you’ll pick up compelling strategies for working with suicidal, borderline and emotionally dysregulated clients.

Learn from three people that made highly lethal suicide attempts and survived, as they courageously share their stories of self-destructiveness, survival, and recovery. They reveal intimate details of their life histories that contributed to their attempts.

Watch Marsha Linehan, founder of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), in action in this session with a middle-aged man with a significant personality disorder struggling with suicidal depression and anger after being left by his girlfriend. 

In this, the third in an absorbing three-volume series, John Sommers-Flanagan and colleagues teach you to effectively assess and intervene with suicidal clients of varying beliefs, cultures and worldviews. He works with a suicidal gay male, and supplemental expert interviews discuss suicide in Asian-American and other cultures and coping strategies for families that have lost a loved one to suicide.

The suicidal client is perhaps the single greatest clinical and ethical challenge for even the most seasoned mental health professional. In this, the first of a compelling three-volume series, John Sommers-Flanagan artfully teaches through live clinical demonstration how to effectively and collaboratively assess and intervene when sitting face-to-face with suicidal clients. In this video he works with a divorced mother suffering from depression, and a 22-year-old college student and veteran of the Iraq war who is struggling with family issues and alcohol use.

In this, the second of a captivating three-volume series, John Sommers-Flanagan masterfully teaches us through live clinical demonstration how to effectively and collaboratively assess and intervene with suicidal clients at different phases of life. First he works with a 15-year-old experiencing stress from her parents’ marital conflict, then a middle aged woman who recently lost her husband to illness, and finally an intensely suicidal 40-year-old.

What are the most essential skills and techniques for succeeding with patients in hospitals and treatment centers? Discover the difference between novice unskilled and expert work care for a range of severe conditions in this 5-part video series.

How do you do an assessment, collect historical data, develop a treatment plan and create a warm working alliance with clients all in the first session? Learn from experts John and Rita Sommers-Flanagan how to quickly create the foundation for a successful therapy and engage clients collaboratively in the treatment process.

Preeminent psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg doesn’t back down in this series of three diagnostic Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) sessions with a paranoid client struggling with suicidal depression after being left by his girlfriend.

What are the most essential skills and techniques for working with severely depressed patients? Find out what to do—and what not to do—in this two-part demonstration of a mental health practitioner interviewing a suicidally depressed hospital patient.

A compassionate therapist gently and skillfully guides suffering parents through the shadow of their son’s suicide.

Join Christoffer Haugaard and David Epston as they work with Irene to build stories through which she heals from brutal childhood trauma

Researcher and clinician David Jobes discusses what works and what doesn't when in the treatment of suicidal clients, and how to manage suicidality with his CAMS program.

Join internationally renowned expert Mary Jo Barrett in a riveting conversation with our editor, Lawrence Rubin, on the collaborative treatment of incest and complex developmental trauma.

Psychologist Margaret Clausen shares poignantly about the loss of her client to suicide,  the steps she took to heal her grief, and the isolation and shame that many clinicians needlessly suffer in the wake of client suicide.

Successful family therapy must consider social media and app use — the empty chair in the room — to draw a complete map of the family.

Lisa Firestone shares what every therapist should know about how dissociation and suicidal thought patterns influence suicide and self-harm.

Using a “revolutionary” Narrative Therapy approach, Kay Ingamells and David Epston free a family held hostage by their daughter’s manipulative behavior.

A psychotherapist treating a suicidal client struggles with memories--and forgetting--of suicide in her own family.

A psychologist describes the trauma of losing a patient to suicide.

In this raw but compelling clinical vignette, therapist Dan Williams uses paradoxical intention in an all-out effort to save his client from committing suicide.

The challenge of therapeutic competence requires basic survival strategies that Louis Cozolino shares in his latest, The Making of a Therapist: A Practical Guide for the Inner Journey.

A no-holds-barred account from the front lines of the psychiatric emergency room at America's oldest public hospital.

With attempted suicide rates greater than 40% in the transgender community, it's important for clinicians to be aware of the issues gender nonconforming clients bring to therapy, and to be knowledgeable about how best to support them. Karisa Barrow challenges therapists to deconstruct the gender binary, identify and work through prejudices, and seek guidance from gender specialists to ensure that we "do no harm."

Teen expert Lynn Ponton, MD, shares wisdom from over three decades of working with children and adolescents, and describes how technology has changed the life of teenagers and those who work with them.

Dan Williams recounts a session with a suicidal teenage girl in which he attempts to use a discussion of The Great Gatsby story to help her understand her own story. 

Janelle Johnson helps us to understand the complexities and challenges of counseling college students.

Relatively new to her career as a psychotherapist, Kayla Rees mourns the loss of a young client to suicide.

Psychotherapist Pamela Garber looks back over her work with a suicidal client and wonders if the therapeutic path she chose was correct.

Perhaps, Adam Brandt ponders, therapeutic healing is predicated not in defining the ego, but rather in its liberation. 

Therapeutic planning with victims of domestic violence is even more challenging during the pandemic.

Explore how to use therapeutic setbacks as powerful learning opportunities for both clinician and client.  

Mental health apps offer many promises, but there are warning signs to be heeded.

Psychotherapist Rick Miller discusses the challenges and benefits of working with gay men and their mothers.

A clinician learns five invaluable truths about depression from his clients on the road to helping them avoid the dark alley of suicide.

Poignant and instructive for both clients and clinicians, Vivian Conan shares her 29-year therapeutic journey from fragmentation and fear to wholeness and connection.