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QPR Institute
Paul Quinnett, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and the president and CEO of the QPR Institute, and educational organisation dedicated to preventing suicide. He is the author of seven books and serves as a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Washington. In addition to directing a large, public sector mental health program for adults and elders for 30 years, he was the director of an American Psychological Association-approved internship in clinical psychology and conducted a limited private practice. The QPR Institute delivers a wide spectrum of suicide prevention educational programs, including the QPR Gatekeeper Training for Suicide Prevention Program, which has been taught to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
“The quintessential book for suicide prevention.”
Iris Bolton, Executive Director, The Link Counseling Center’s National Resource, Centre for Suicide Prevention and Aftercare
Counselling Suicidal People: A Therapy of Hope is designed and written for the non-expert in clinical suicidology, and this, the third edition, includes recent advances in the understanding of suicide and the current best practices for helping suicidal people. This book provides the therapist, counselor, social worker, nurse, pastor, mental health professional, or other provider with a ready-to-use, hands-on, practical set of tools for suicide intervention. Since hopelessness is the most common psychological state of those considering suicide – and may be the most important factor in predicting a self-destructive act – this book focuses on changing hopelessness into hope.
Author Paul Quinnett devotes the first part to basic intervention, risk assessment and risk management, and then follows up with more than 50 treatment and therapeutic techniques, strategies, and maneuvers for helping suicidal people. The author derived some of these interventions from well-researched scientific articles and others from his practice specialising in the treatment of suicidal people.
“It has taken me 30 years and much trial and error to amass the wisdom, insight, and understanding Paul Quinnett has crammed into this slim volume. With wit and exceptional readability, he has offered the perfect primer for counseling suicidal persons. This simply is the best no-nonsense guide I have ever read to help one to understand and form a collaborative, working relationship with someone in suicidal despair. As his title suggests, there is hope; and Paul Quinnett has packaged it between these covers!”
Lanny Berman, Ph.D.
Executive Director, American Association of Suicidology
“Paul Quinnett has done it again. In his plain-spoken yet compassionate style, he communicates sound strategies for connecting with and helping suicidal individuals. Counseling Suicidal People deserves a place on the desk of every crisis worker and therapist who works with suicidal individuals. I will assign it to our psychology interns and psychiatry residents.”
Thomas E. Ellis, Psy.D. ABPP
Professor of Psychology, West Virginia University, School of Medicine, Co-author of Choosing to Live: How to Defeat Suicide Through Cognitive Therapy
“Paul Quinnett has a hard-earned advantage over most of us in suicide prevention work … he has spent years in therapeutic relationship with many more suicidal people than we may ever encounter. His willingness to not only work with them to keep them alive but to learn the lessons they impart to him, is generously shared in this book to benefit us all. Short of having Dr. Quinnett standing next to me or any hotline volunteer as we try to help suicidal people find reasons to live, this book does the next best thing. It gives us knowledge and insight we need but may never be able to learn firsthand.”
Karen M. Marshall
Programme Development Director, American Association of Suicidology
“This work eloquently captures the essence of the most sophisticated interventions, that of the healing relationship of hope.”
Dr. Ronald Bonner
Journal of Suicide and Life-Threatening Behaviour
“Very illuminating! Gave me a clear understanding of suicidal pain and what I can do to relieve it.”
Steve Pitters
Family Advocate and Counselor
Counselling Suicidal People: A Therapy of Hope was first published in 1992 under the title Suicide: Intervention and Therapy. The second edition under the current title followed in 2000. Since the book’s first publication, professionals in mental health care have learned a great deal more about suicidal behaviour, its causes, and treatments. Author Paul Quinnett, a clinical psychologist and renowned expert in the field, incorporated those advances in suicidology to expand and update the book in this, its third edition.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all the people who have taught me about suicide in the most difficult and painful ways: those who have lost a loved one to suicide yet have themselves survived, those who have seriously considered suicide yet have never attempted it, those who have attempted suicide yet live on, and those who died by their own hand yet left the gift of their stories behind.