Alternatives to Suicide

Alternatives to Suicide: Beyond Risk and Toward a Life Worth Living demonstrates how fostering resilience and a desire for life can broaden and advance an understanding of suicide. The book summarizes the existing literature and outlines a new focus on the dynamic interplay of risk and resilience that leads to a life-focus approach to suicide prevention. It calls for a treatment approach that enhances the opportunity to collaboratively engage clients in discussion about their lives. Providing a new perspective on how to approach suicide prevention, the book also lays out key theories on resilience and the interplay of risk and protective factors.

Finally, the book outlines how emerging technologies and advances in data-analytic sophistication using real-time monitoring of suicide dynamics are ushering the field of suicide research and prevention into a new and exciting era.

• Focuses on what attenuates the transition from thinking about suicide to attempting it
• Calls for a life-focus treatment approach as opposed to risk-aversion intervention techniques
• Demonstrates how fostering resilience can advance our understanding of pathways to suicide
• Discusses emerging technologies being used in current suicide research and prevention
• Outlines the differences between risk factors and risk correlates
• Covers real-time assessment of dynamic suicide risk

Researchers and clinicians from mental health disciplines (psychology, psychiatry, social work, nursing); students in mental health disciplines