Assessment and Intervention with Suicidal Clients
A research-informed training that emphasizes collaboration and empathy while offering practical interventions for suicidality.
Your client needs to talk about suicide. Are you ready?
Develop the confidence and competence to have meaningful, effective conversations—grounded in compassion, research, and real-world clinical skill.
Course Overview
- Collaborate empathically instead of approaching from authority or anxiety.
- Use structured assessment and intervention methods for suicidal clients.
- Integrate contextual factors—age, gender, race, religion, culture.
- Build safety plans leveraging clients’ strengths and supports.
- Convert uncertainty into confidence when suicide risk emerges in therapy.
Who Should Take This Course
Ideal for helping professionals who encounter mental-health crises:
- ✔ Counselors
- ✔ Social Workers
- ✔ Psychologists
- ✔ Psychiatrists
- ✔ Addiction Counselors
- ✔ Marriage & Family Therapists
- ✔ Physicians
- ✔ School Psychologists
- ✔ Case Managers
- ✔ Other Helping Professionals
Volume 1
Dr. John Sommers-Flanagan demonstrates a collaborative, research-based approach in sessions with:
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Michelle — recently divorced mother facing depression, inertia, and self-doubt
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Cory — 22-year-old Lakota-Sioux veteran coping with trauma, alcohol use, and access to guns
Learn to recognize the eight dimensions of suicidality and integrate the seven fundamental clinical tasks into assessment and early intervention.
Volume 2
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Kennedy — 15-year-old overwhelmed by family conflict
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Jeannie — middle-aged woman grieving the loss of her husband
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Kay — 40-year-old with intense, persistent suicidality linked to family history
Use the Mood Rating Scale with a Suicide Floor and the Suicide Rating Form to gauge risk accurately and build practical, empowering safety plans.
Volume 3
Work with acute suicidality (a socially isolated gay male with access to lethal means) while balancing autonomy with duty to protect, hospitalization decisions, and appropriate referrals. Supplemental segments address culture, minority youth, and family coping after suicide loss.
Why Take This Course
- Ask difficult questions with calm confidence
- Build trust through empathy—not authority
- Assess risk with clear, structured frameworks
- Design culturally sensitive, strength-based safety plans
- Respond effectively across the full spectrum of suicidality
Transform fear and uncertainty into clinical confidence and humane connection.
Meet the Instructors
John Sommers-Flanagan, PhD
Professor of Counselor Education at the University of Montana, clinical psychologist, and author of Clinical Interviewing and more.
Victor Yalom, PhD
Founder of Psychotherapy.net; licensed psychologist with 30+ years experience; producer of 100+ clinical training videos.
