Understanding Suicidal Behaviour

How can suicide be prevented and treated by mental health professionals? This book offers a clinical guide to the assessment, treatment and prevention of suicidal behaviour, from a new and useful theoretical perspective - a developmental process approach. The book presents the arguments and research evidence that suicidal behaviour is not just a response to current emotional crises, but is influenced by persistent characteristics that can be defined in psychological anbd biological terms.

The authors bring together research-based evidence that establishes three key aspects of the development process approach: suicidal behaviour results from the interaction between stressful life events and an individual vulnerability; this individual vulnerability is itself the product of psychobiological factors, genetics and past life events; vulnerability, in this sense, influences how the the individual perceives, interprets and reacts to adverse life events, perhaps leading to hopelessness and suicidal behaviour.

Psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses and other mental health practitioners will appreciate the conceptual and clinical value of this book based on its * description of biological and psychological developmental processes leading to suicide, integrating evidence-based information from a broad range of disciplines * psychobiological definition of long-and short-term risk factors for suicide, and innovative approach to psychological and biological targets for treatment and prevention * cutting-edge discussion of implications for the study and treatment of suicidal behaviour, by some of the leading authorities in the field