The Teen Suicide and Self-Harm Prevention Workbook is a proactive approach to dealing with the many characteristics that may prompt teens to experience self-harm and/or suicide ideation. Designed to be used with clients in the care of a trained clinician, the purpose of this workbook is to provide you with information and tools that build upon each other to help your clients manage thoughts, feelings, and behaviors related to self-harm and suicide.
This workbook is a practical, step-by-step guide to present a detailed understanding of the context in which self-harm and suicide play out in a person’s life, warning signs and risk factors experienced by people suffering with thoughts and actions of hurting themselves, ways to prevent suicide ideation, and methods for finding a healthy support network.
Clinicians are responsible for ensuring the health, well-being, and safety of the person or people with whom they work while using this workbook. You will need to use your clinical judgment while utilizing the materials contained in this workbook. Clinical judgment includes deciding how each of the handouts and activities can best be used to help clients achieve maximum health and wellness, while working to resolve feelings, thoughts, and behaviors related to self-harm and suicidal ideation.
Our goal for this workbook is NOT to diagnose a client’s potential for self-harm or suicidal ideation, or even for the clinician to make a mental health diagnosis from this workbook’s content. Our goal is to touch on some of the symptoms and possibilities, create realizations, and provide coping methods which will help people to go forward and consider the possibility of a need for further medical help, medications, and therapy. Mental health issues of ANY kind are not to be stigmatized nor should anyone need to feel like a victim of stereotyping.
Most importantly, our goal for this workbook is to help clients recognize that many other people have many of the same issues, to which NO shame is connected, and self-harm and/or suicide is definitely not the answer to their problems.
The pages of this workbook can be used in a variety of ways:
- Activities can be used with individual clients alone, in pairs, or in a very small group. If there is more than one person, the activities can be completed individually and then shared with each other, as long as all of the participants are comfortable doing so.
- Individual clients or small group members can complete the activities with the help of a clinician, if needed. When utilizing this approach, clinicians will also help their clients process their responses to the various activities they have completed.
- Small group members can utilize the activities as part of the therapeutic process. When using this approach, they can process the information together with other group members to help achieve commonality and optimal results.
- If there is more than one client, explain that this will be a What is said in this room, stays in this room session. Explain to the clients that to insure privacy, they need to use a name code when writing about or talking about other people in their lives. (Ex: H.H.M. might be, He helps me!) Don’t use a person’s initials.
- If there is a very small group, it is often successful to have group members work together in pairs. When utilizing this approach, be sure to pair group members based on willingness to work together. Pairs can process information together, role play, or work as a team in a group discussion.
- All of the materials contained in the chapters of this workbook can be utilized in an individual or a very small group setting. If the clinician is using this workbook with a small group, you may photocopy or print enough materials for the members in the group, or allow individuals to reflect, write, and then process the materials together. The clinician can pick and choose the reflection activities that will best assist clients to overcome their desire to self-injure or die by suicide.
Chapter Descriptions
Each chapter begins with a table of contents and treatment planning options for clinicians of individuals and small groups to engage in prior to distributing the actual activity.
Self-Harm
This chapter will help clinicians to assist clients identify and explore their self-harm actions as well as discover and implement some tools, skills, and techniques for overcoming this behavior.
Warning Signs
This chapter will assist clinicians to help clients recognize, identify, and explore the warning signs and the effects that these signs have on their self-harm or suicidal thoughts.
Risk Factors
This chapter will assist clinicians to help clients explore their various risk factors and ways they can reduce the effects of these risk factors when experiencing a crisis.
Prevention
This chapter will assist clinicians to provide clients with tools, skills, and techniques for receiving help and reducing their self-harming and suicidal ideation.
Support
This chapter will assist clinicians to provide clients with ways to access a variety of needed support people as well as community resources.
Client and Clinician National Resources
This chapter will provide clients and clinicians information about self-harm and suicide prevention from national resources.
*Free PDF Download
When you purchase your copy of the Teen Suicide & Self-Harm Prevention Workbook you’ll receive a free PDF download of the assessment tools and all of the reproducible activities in this workbook, making it easy for you to make copies.
Teen Suicide & Self-Harm Prevention Workbook eBook (PDF)
This workbook is also available as an eBook (PDF format). Save the eBook on your computer and print off the worksheets and handouts as you need them.
Teen Suicide & Self-Harm Prevention Card Deck
Using the Discussion Starter Card Deck will break the ice, encourage openness, and help introduce a specific subject. Activity handouts included in these workbooks are reflective, easy-to-use exercises, presented in a variety of formats to accommodate multiple intelligences and different learning styles. Each question corresponds to a page in the workbook.
Sample Questions:
Many people harm themselves in an attempt to deal with their emotional pain. What does your emotional pain feel like?
Rather than impulsively harming yourself in any way, what is a possible alternative at an emotional moment? Ask others in the room.
It is very important to have a team of people that can be activated when one is considering self-harm or suicide. Who is part of your support team?
