Your client needs to talk about suicide. Are you ready?
Take a look inside...
A research-informed approach that emphasizes collaboration and offers effective interventions for suicidality.
- Intervene collaboratively and empathically rather than from a position of authority or anxiety
- Optimize your clinical effectiveness with suicidal clients
- Develop strategies for assessing and enlisting clients’ strengths and resources.
- Acquire skills to create an effective safety plan with diverse suicidal clients
- Discover how to incorporate contextual factors such as race, age, gender, sexual orientation and religion
- Expand your clinical flexibility and confidence with all forms of suicidality, from passive to active, acute to chronic, and indirect to lethal
Talking With Your Clients About Suicide Shouldn't be Uncomfortable.
With this online course you'll develop the confidence and competence you need when suicide comes up.
Who should takes the course
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychiatrists
- Addiction Counselors
- School Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Physicians
- Case Managers
- Other Helping Professionals
Volume 1
In Volume 1 of this comprehensive and highly acclaimed series, you’ll see Dr. Sommers-Flanagan demonstrate his collaborative and research-based approach in multiple sessions with each of the following clients:
- Michelle, a recently divorced mother of a young daughter, who seeks relief from the punishing symptoms of depression, inertia and self-doubt.
- Cory, a previously proud and optimistic 22-year-old college student and citizen of the Lakota-Sioux nation, who upon returning from the Iraq war finds his family and his tribe in disarray. Significant alcohol use and access to guns compounds his suicide risk.
Through compassionate and targeted interviewing, Sommers-Flanagan will teach you how to recognize and address the eight dimensions of suicidality. In the process, your clients will begin to gain clarity around their suicidality and you will develop a clearer clinical picture that will help you to lay the groundwork for intervention. Descriptive and informative pre and post-demonstration discussions between Sommers-Flanagan and Victor Yalom will teach you how to seamlessly integrate the research-based and clinically-proven “seven fundamental clinical tasks” into your own assessment and early intervention planning. By the conclusion of this training video you will be far better-equipped to attend to the clinical challenges of the suicidal client.
Volume 2
In Volume 2 of this comprehensive and highly acclaimed series, you’ll see Dr. Sommers-Flanagan conduct initial sessions with:
- Kennedy, a 15-year-old high school student and youngest of three who is experiencing the unbearable stress of her parents’ marital conflict and associated tension within the home.
- Jeannie, a middle-aged woman who is approaching retirement while also grieving the recent death of her second husband to illness.
- Kay, a deeply distressed and intensely suicidal 40-year-old who struggles with tormenting memories, thoughts, and feelings related to her deceased schizophrenic mother.
Sommers-Flanagan will teach you how to assess and intervene collaboratively with your suicidal clients by tapping into both their internal coping skills and external resources. Working from a deeply empathetic therapeutic foundation, he offers highly concrete strategies for use during both assessment and early treatment. You will learn how to implement the “Mood Rating Scale with a Suicide Floor” to determine changes in your client’s emotional status as they relate to self-harm. As he models use of the “Suicide Rating Form,” you will develop strategies for accurately assessing your client’s risk for suicide. Finally, you will acquire skills for building a safety plan with your suicidal clients that includes creation of a safe environment, recognizing warning signs, identifying peer and community resources, and choosing an alternative environment.
Volume 3
In this 3rd and final volume of this comprehensive and highly acclaimed series, Sommers-Flanagan addresses the issue of acute suicidality as he works with a 35-year-old white gay male who is socially isolated, hopeless, and with access to lethal means. You will develop a deeper clinical appreciation for issues such as balancing a client’s autonomy with the duty to protect, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, incorporating hospitalization into treatment planning, and appropriate referral of suicidal clients.
Supplemental expert interviews cover the issues of suicide in Asian-American cultures, the challenge of effectively assessing suicidal minority youth, and coping strategies for family members who have lost loved ones to suicide.
By urging you to replace your pencils and laptops with deep human connection, Sommers-Flanagan leads to appreciate the role of shame and saving face when working with suicidal Asian-American clients and their families. He teaches how to ask concrete and specific questions about suicide, and you will acquire skills for establishing meaningful therapeutic contact with minority youth in a variety of settings. By understanding the impact of bullying, social alienation and stigma on gender development, you will be able to more effectively assess suicidal LGBT clients. And finally, you will learn to clinically negotiate the delicate balance between the will to live and the urge to die with clients who have lost a loved one to suicide.
Why Take This Course?
Working with suicidal clients can be one of the most challenging — and most important — responsibilities in mental health care. This course equips you with the knowledge, confidence, and empathy to respond effectively and compassionately when life is on the line.
Led by Dr. John Sommers-Flanagan, a respected psychologist and professor, this training gives you real-world demonstrations and evidence-based tools to assess and intervene with suicidal clients safely and collaboratively.
You’ll discover how to:
Ask the hard questions about suicide directly and confidently
Build trust and create a sense of safety through empathy, not authority
Assess risk using structured tools and proven frameworks
Design safety plans that draw on your clients’ strengths and resources
Navigate cultural and contextual factors like age, race, gender, and religion
Work with all levels of suicidality, from passive thoughts to imminent risk
This course doesn’t just teach techniques — it helps you transform fear and uncertainty into clinical confidence and human connection.
Meet the Course Expert:
John Sommers-Flanagan, PhD is a professor of counselor education at the University of Montana, a clinical psychologist and a mental health consultant.
Primarily specializing in working with children, parents, and families, John is author or coauthor of over 50 professional publications and nine books, including How to Listen so Parents will Talk and Talk so Parents will Listen (John Wiley & Sons, 2011), Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories in Context and Practice (2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons, 2012), Clinical Interviewing (5th ed., Wiley, 2014), and Tough Kids, Cool Counseling (2nd ed., ACA, 2007).
Victor Yalom, PhD is the founder, CEO, and resident cartoonist of Psychotherapy.net. He is a licensed psychologist with over 30 years of clinical experience, and has conducted workshops in existential-humanistic and group therapy in the US, Mexico, and China. He has produced over 60 training videos in psychotherapy, counseling, and addictions treatment.
30 reviews for Assessment and Intervention with Suicidal Clients