September is National Suicide Prevention Month. Learn how meeting with a therapist can combat suicide head-on and provide you with newfound hope.
Therapy can save lives. That’s not an overstatement. Working with a therapist can help those dealing with such profound hopelessness find a way out of the dark and back toward connection.
In the U.S., one person dies by suicide every 11 minutes. Of equal concern, over 13.2 million people experienced suicidal ideation, or thought about taking their own life. Source: CDC. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in this country; its impact is becoming particularly prevalent within communities of healthcare professionals.
Licensed mental health therapists are trained to recognize, assess, and respond to suicide risk in their clients. Ask any therapist, and they’re likely to emphasize suicide prevention as a paramount responsibility in their role. At Marvin, therapists work directly with healthcare professionals—a group who has been found to have an increased risk for suicide. Source: JAMA. How do they do it? How does merely speaking with a therapist undermine such deep despair and reinvigorate hope?
Facilitating Deep Understanding and Empathy
First and foremost, therapy provides the space to vocalize troubling thoughts, like those associated with suicidal ideation. Therapists provide compassionate, understanding space to speak frankly about overriding depression, anxiety, or grief. Put simply, therapists do not judge. They seek to understand how a client feels.
For many clients, such empathy can be relief in itself. They can begin to deconstruct the specifics of their despair, and sort through feelings of life and death—topics that would otherwise make most peers and family members uncomfortable. Given that so many people experience suicidal ideation without ever attempting to die by suicide, it is critical for therapists to give airspace to address these feelings so they do not escalate in isolation.
Finding Reasons to Live Rather Than Die
In therapy, it’s important to acknowledge that suicidal thoughts, as intense as they are, do not define a person's entire life. They are oftentimes a symptom of something deeper that can be addressed with the right support.
While therapy itself is not a magical cure for suicidal thoughts, it can act as a bridge to reconnect people to the world around them. Through consistent support and therapeutic techniques, individuals can rediscover hope, purpose, and joy, even after enduring deep emotional pain.
Therapists have the skills necessary to help someone find hope when someone cannot find it themselves. For most clients in need, reasons to live include connections with others, with their everyday responsibilities, and especially with pets. Therapy can help individuals foster deeper connections in their world, making it less likely that they’d ever want to depart from it.
Instilling Effective Coping Mechanisms
It can be difficult to see beyond your own overwhelm. When people being to think that suicide is a solution for their feelings, it is often because they see no other way to cope with their emotional pain. In therapy, people learn practical coping mechanisms that allow them to manage these feelings in healthier ways.
Thoughts of suicide can happen when someone’s pain exceeds their hope. Together, therapists and clients in this situation will develop safety plans and build support networks to help them cope.
Taking Immediate Safety Seriously, Always
One of the most relieving parts of therapy is the fact that you are sitting with a qualified, experienced mental health professional. That means you have someone who is going to look out for risks and hazards along your journey.
With a therapist, clients who experience suicidal ideation or suicide attempts will create tangible safety plans—together. That way, a client has the resources and steps they need whenever they feel that they have reached an inescapable low point. Additionally, therapy provides a weekly check-in to ensure a client is staying consistently connected to life. By providing hope on a consistent basis, therapists can help suicidal clients miminize the potential for impulsive, dangerous behavior.
Creating a Life Worth Living
Importantly, therapy is all about designing the life that you want to lead. When a client is on the brink, therapy can help not only protect them, but it can shine the light on where the client wants to go next.
For many people, going through a crisis can leave them with a renewed sense of hope. They can learn skills that boost their overall autonomy, and begin to take small, actionable steps that support their well-being in the long run. This might mean joining a support group, building a new community, adopting a pet, or making a career change. It could mean reorienting their relationship to substances, managing family relationships, or processing previous trauma in therapy.
Therapy offers the possibility of connection, healing, and transformation. By providing a compassionate space for individuals to explore their pain, therapy helps people rediscover their value, reclaim their autonomy, and reconnect with life.
If you're struggling, know that you're not alone. There is help, and there is hope.
Suicide prevention requires fast and steady action. If you or someone you know is in immediate distress or has plans of suicide, call or text 988. You can also call the police. If you need some extra support right now or just someone to listen, contact the Marvin free crisis support line at 888-404-1163.
To take the next step in your mental health journey, sign up for Marvin.
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