This article provides a personal account of loss, survival, and professional learning following a client’s suicide. The therapist’s own narrative is woven in with research about the construct of clinician-as-suicide-survivor. Aspects of supervision and training are discussed, in particular the importance of teaching an appreciation of danger and the demystification of psychotherapy through sharing stories of failure and loss.
BrownH. N. (1987). The impact of suicide on therapists in training. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 28(2), 101–112.
8.
Clinician Survivor Task Force. (2016). Clinicians as survivors of suicide: Personal accounts by clinician survivors. Washington, DC: American Association of Suicidology. Retrieved fromhttp://pages.iu.edu/∼jmcintos/personacc.htm
9.
CrawfordM. J. (2004). Suicide following discharge from in-patient psychiatric care. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 10, 434–438.
10.
DryeR.GouldingR.GouldingM. (1973). No-suicide decisions: Patient monitoring of suicide risk. American Journal of Psychiatry, 130(2), 171–174.
11.
ErskineR. G. (2009). The culture of transactional analysis: Theory, culture, and evolving patterns. Transactional Analysis Journal, 39, 14–21.
12.
FarberowN. L. (2005). The mental health professional as suicide survivor. Clinical Neuropsychiatry: Journal of Treatment Evaluation, 2(1), 13–20.
13.
FosterV. A.McAdamsC. R. (1999). The impact of client suicide in counselor training: Implications for counselor education and supervision. Counselor Education and Supervision, 39, 22–29.
GarfunkelG. (1995). Lifeline. In SussmanM. B. (Ed.), A perilous calling: The hazards of psychotherapy practice (pp. 148–161). New York, NY: Wiley.
16.
GerardB.MathewsonG. C. (1966). The effects of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2, 278–287.
17.
GoldsteinR. B.BlackD. W.NasrallahA.WinkourG. (1991). The prediction of suicide: Sensitivity, specificity, and predictive value of a multivariate model applied to suicide among 1906 patients with affective disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry, 48(5), 418–422.
HechtJ. M. (2013). Stay: A history of suicide and the philosophies against it [Kindle e-reader]. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
20.
HendinH.LipschitzA.MaltsbergerJ. T.Pollinger HaasA. (2000). Therapists’ reactions to patients’ suicides. American Journal of Psychiatry, 157, 2022–2027.
21.
HoT. P. (2003). The suicide risk of discharged psychiatric patients. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 64, 702–707.
22.
HollowayW. H. (1973). Shut the escape hatch. In HollowayW. H.HollowayM., The monograph series, Numbers I-X (Monograph IV). Medina, OH: Midwest Institute for Human Understanding.
23.
KleespiesP. M.DettmerE. L. (2000). The stress of patient emergencies for the clinician: Incidence, impact, and means of coping. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 56, 1353–1369.
24.
KleespiesP. M.PenkW. E.ForsythJ. P. (1993). The stress of patient suicidal behavior during clinical training: Incidence, impact, and recovery. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 24, 293–303.
25.
KleespiesP. M.SmithM. R.BeckerB. R. (1990). Psychology interns as patient suicide survivors: Incidence, impact, and recovery. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 21, 257–263.
KolodnyS.BinderR. L.BronsteinA. A.FriendR. L. (1979). The working through of patients’ suicides by four therapists. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 9, 33–46.
28.
Kübler-RossE.KesslerD. (2005). On grief and grieving: Finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. New York, NY: Scribner.
29.
LandaicheM. (2014). Failure and shame in professional practice. Transactional Analysis Journal, 44, 268–278.
LittleR. (2009). Understanding the psychodynamics of suicidal clients: Working with suicidal and presuicidal states. Transactional Analysis Journal, 39, 219–228.
32.
MalinovskiA. J. (2014). Self-care for the mental health practitioner: The theory, research and practice of preventing and addressing the occupational hazards of the profession[Kindle e-reader]. London, England: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
33.
MaltzbergerJ. T.BuieD. H. (1974). Countertransference hate in the treatment of suicidal clients. Archives of General Psychiatry, 30, 625–633.
34.
Marks-TarlowT. (2008). Psyche’s veil: Psychotherapy, fractals and complexity [Kindle e-reader]. New York, NY: Routledge.
35.
Marks-TarlowT. (2012). Clinical intuition in psychotherapy [Kindle e-reader]. New York, NY: Norton.
36.
MarshallK. A. (1980). When a patient commits suicide. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 10(1), 29–40.
37.
McAdamsC. R.IIIFosterV. A. (2000). Client suicide: Its frequency and impact on counselors. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 22, 107–121.
38.
McKenzieW.WurrC. (2001). Early suicide following discharge from a psychiatric hospital. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 31, 358–363.
39.
MeehanJ.KapurN.HuntI. M. (2006). Suicide in mental health in-patients and within 3 months of discharge: National clinical survey. British Journal of Psychiatry, 188, 129–134.
40.
PopeK. S.SonneJ. L.GreeneB. (2006). What therapists don’t talk about and why: Understanding taboos that hurt us and our clients. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
41.
QinP.NordentoftM. (2005). Suicide risk in relation to psychiatric hospitalization: Evidence based on longitudinal registers. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62, 427–432.
RobertsonR.CombsA. (Eds.). (2014). Chaos theory in psychology and the life sciences. New York, NY: Psychology Press. (Original work published 1995)
45.
RuskinR.SakinofskyI.BagbyR. M.DickensS.SousaG. (2004). Impact of patient suicide on psychiatrists and psychiatric trainees. Academic Psychiatry, 28(2), 104–110.
46.
SchulzD. (2012). Client’s suicide. In WeinerK. M. (Ed.), Therapeutic and legal issues for therapists who have survived suicide: Breaking the silence (pp. 59–70) [Kindle e-reader]. New York, NY: Routledge. (Original work published 2005)
47.
ShakespeareW. (1952). Hamlet, prince of Denmark. In ClarkeW. G.WrightW. A. (Eds.), The plays and sonnets of William Shakespeare (Vol. 2, pp. 29–72). Chicago, IL: Encyclopaedia Britannica. (Original work published 1603)
48.
SkovholtT. M.Trotter-MathisonM. (2011). The resilient practitioner: Burnout prevention and self-care strategies for counselors, therapists, teachers and health professionals (2nd ed.) [Kindle e-reader]. New York, NY: Routledge.
49.
SpiegelmanJ. S.WerthJ. L. (2012). Don’t forget about me: The experiences of therapists-in-training after a client has attempted or died by suicide. In WeinerK. M. (Ed.), Therapeutic and legal issues for therapists who have survived a client suicide: Breaking the silence (Kindle location 768-1290) [Kindle e-reader]. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press. (Original work published 2005)