Who We Become (and the Humor in It)!

I agree that it is very important that with any profession you learn to leave work at work and not take it home. That is important for all realms of health. But at the same time, I am becoming more and more aware of how we truly do become our profession.

Have you ever noticed how in casual after-hours conversation with a working adult you can still get bits and pieces of their profession intertwined with their conversation? Maybe it’s in their words. Maybe it’s in their body language. Maybe it’s in their tone. There is different ways in which our professions can shine through. Whichever way it might be, the individual sometimes can be oblivious that it is even occurring.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had friends say to me “stop analyzing me.” Many times it is said in a joking manner, and in most of those accounts, I am going about the conversation with no intentions of “analyzing” anything. Questioning has just become an important part of how I try to understand life and issues better; therefore, I question when my friends are trying to explain something to me and it can be interpreted as “analyzing” in a “bad” form, I suppose.

[Side Note: You know, now that I think about that. I suppose what it comes down to is the bad conatation that “analyzing” gets when someone has the thought of “therapist” lingering in the back of their mind. I suppose when I’m simply questioning to understand, people think I’m questioning in order to analyze. With analyzing they are anticipating that once my questions subside I’ll be spitting out something like an awful sounding diagnosis at them. Would it benefit me to inform my friends that social workers do not typically “diagnose” mental illness!? HA!]

On some occasions I have had friends who have gotten upset with me to the point that they will state, “I just want to talk to a friend and not a psychiatrist.” Not that I’m a psychiatrist or anything, but we know what they mean…

So I admit. When you get into a profession that you enjoy and you’re passionate about it is easy to take on that role with your whole being. I mean think about it. Think of your friends that are really passionate about their careers: do they constantly blog about that topic? Do they make jokes related to the profession? Does their conversation revolve around the profession? Do they frequently tell stories in an enthusiastic manner relating to their adventures while on the job? [You’ll find that you are able to quickly answer “yes” to some (or most) of these questions if your friend’s line of work is one that you typically are not interested in…HA!]

So is one “taking their work home” if they have taken on the behavioral or conversational styles of their profession to the point that they are noticeable in their everyday lives? I would argue no. As humans we mold in ways that we are accustom too. If one spends years in academia absorbing a particular behavioral style (or way of thinking or conversing), one is going to have a difficult time separating from it. It goes the same for one who has spent several years in any type of working atmosphere. Teachers will frequently find themselves bringing out the “teacher voice” in chaotic arenas other than the classroom. Preachers will quote scripture from stances other than behind the pulpit. Therapists will question for better understanding whether the person is lying on a couch or not. Politicians will lie whether they are…

…okay, so you get my point.

I guess it comes down to the realization that this sort of thing will occur and does occur. With this being the case, why not accept it and use it to your advantage. Sometimes the best it is good for is a hardy laugh! HA! I’m not kidding. Let me help you to see the humor in it…

If you do not see how it can be humorous take your career path and begin to pay closer attention to your casual interactions with people in your same field. You’ll notice how their conversations or behavioral gestures or whatever it might be are patterned after their experience with the field.

For those in a therapeutic field allow me to share some humorous observations I’ve made over the past month. For those not in this field, feel free to read on in order to educate yourself on how you can tell if you're conversing with someone from our field without even being told of their professional background…

I personally had a conversation probably a little over a month ago with a friend of mine. Recently, as I’ve given that conversation some more reflection I’ve noticed how my end of the conversation was so therapeutically influenced.

It was late at night and I was feeling down. I had been feeling down for a couple of days, so I wanted to talk to someone. I picked a friend that I felt would listen to me and give me encouraging responses [it’s important to note that the friend I chose was someone who does not share the therapeutic background]. So I was telling this person how I had just been feeling down and stuff like that. But what is interesting is how I would follow up almost every “feeling down” sentence with something like “but it’s not like I’m suicidal. Nothing like that. I promise.” HA HA!

Okay, so if you are not getting why I find that so funny now as I look back on it, allow me to explain. Okay, without going into detail about what my “feeling down” sentences were, I can say that they weren’t anything like “I don’t feel like life is worth living” or anything to that extent. So when you think about it, it’s interesting to see that I would follow any “depressed” sounding sentence up with a statement that I am not suicidal…HA!

Besides a therapist, who naturally finds his/herself immediately thinking about assessing for suicidal ideation when someone makes a statement at all relating to feeling down?!!? Only a therapist. HA! Most people would be like, “dude, chill out…I wasn’t even thinking you were suicidal!” HA! I mean I kid you not, I kept saying it…HA!

[Side Note: So besides it being a therapist thing—to assess for suicidal ideation following depressive statements—I’ll admit, I am very sensitive to the topic of suicide. What I mean by that is that in our line of work, suicidal clients scare me the most (not the “crazy” people or the psychotic ones, but the suicidal ones). This is because I worry about making a mistake (i.e. not asking the right questions, not recognizing a sign that I should have, not taking the proper measures in a situation, etc.) and being liable for someone having committed suicide when I could have possibly prevented it. Now THAT’S scary stuff! I mean, honestly, how many professions can truly say that their mistakes flirt with the line between life and death? And don’t immediately spout off with physicians unless you are willing to pay a therapist anything HALFWAY close to what we pay physicians…HA!]

So as I’ve reflected back on my conversation with this friend, I find myself finding humor in how I conversed and openly shared my “suicidal assessment.” That’s just funny to me!

A second think to note when conversing with therapists, which is the obvious one, and the frequently shared joke, though it is true is the “how did that make you feel” line. Okay, so SOMETIMES we’ll say that, but what is more frequent is just something along that same line. Some response back to your stated situation that involves connecting your feelings to the actions or the situation. “How did you feel then?” “What were you feeling?” Therapy revolves around connecting feelings to actions/thoughts/behaviors/situations.

Finally, this one I noticed when I was having a casual sit down talk with some friends/co-workers that happen to be in the same therapeutic field. I noticed it when it happened, but I thought more about it later and thought it was funny…

We were talking about counseling techniques and one of the other ladies was like, “A little self-disclosing, but…”

If you ever hear someone use the word “self-disclosing” or “self-disclosure” they probably are from our line of work! HA! I mean, seriously, think about it. With most people, when they are going to share a personal story about his/herself they don’t preface it with “a little self-disclosing, but…” HA! Most people just tell the story! HA! In the counseling field we find ourselves constantly studying when to self-disclose and when not to. With this being the case, when we are presented with an opportunity to relate a personal story of our own in our everyday conversation, we find our selves routinely going through the processing in our mind of “okay, this is self-disclosing if I share this story” so we’ll unconsciously label it “self-disclosing” in prefacing the story…HA!

Okay…so those are just some funny things I’ve been observing and thinking about lately. I wouldn’t be surprised if you said you have had some similar experiences involving your field and people in it.

Camping 101

What a load of fun I had this past weekend getting to camp with 9 of my friends from my undergraduate college experience. Each of the nine women were women I had met through my social club which I spent three years active in. What a great bunch of women I have been blessed to know from that experience!

I got some AMAZING pictures from the weekend (I LOVE pictures)! And another of the women even got some funny videos which we posted on YouTube. The camping experience would not be complete without all the laughs, jokes, and reminiscing we did about past times and pranks. We often times found ourselves together doing things such as skipping rocks in the lake, playing catch, roasting hot dogs, taking hikes, singing karaoke, and shining our flashlights up in the woods behind us at night thinking there were animals coming down the hill into our camp site!

At night if we weren't laughing about past experiences we had had with one another, we were laughing at our neighboring campers at the park. We had our large group of heavily intoxicated partiers directly across from us, and then our Bob Marley singing, marijuana smoking, dog losing couple diagonally across from our site--who could have asked for a better bunch of neighboring campers! ;)

All that said, I think I speak for everyone that a GREAT time was had during our camping experience! I wanted to end with some of my favorite quotes from the weekend. Feel free to add any additional ones that I might have left off, fellow campers!

• Did someone say something about shots?! ~ Ellison
• What the hell?! ~ Witcher (coming from inside the small tent filled with 4 people)
• Did anybody bring the teabags?!? ;)
• I was looking for a little lap action! ~Ellison to Janaye
• QUEEN LATIFAH!!!!
• Oh, there's our dog again. And he's with the same people and he has his leash this time. ~the neighboring campers who were high and singing Bob Marley (their dog KEPT getting loose and wondering into our campsite)
• I'm glad my first time was with you all. ~Rawlings

Tee hee hee! We had some fun times....what can I say! HA!

It's Monday! YOU Do the Math!

This Monday I can't help but revert my readers back to last Monday's post because once again, the election which takes place tomorrow is going to produce the most important numbers for this week.

GO VOTE TOMORROW IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY EARLY VOTED!

Take advantage of the freedom and right we have to elect our own leaders! It truly is a blessing!

I saw a segment on a recent Oprah episode about North Korea...MY GOODNESS! Those poor poor people that live there! The dictator in that country is EXTREME! Talk about citizens not having any rights!

BE PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN AND EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE!

SPECIAL EDITION: It's Monday! YOU Do The Math

DON'T VOTE!!

That's right...DON'T VOTE...

...(that is) until you've done your homework!

It's real simple. I figure in a little over a week we'll have PLENTY of statistics to analyze and compare with the up-coming elections. So, this week I want to dedicate this entry to the up-coming numbers of the November elections which will be held on November 7th in your friendly neighborhood.

I did my homework and I early voted this past weekend. If you still haven't voted, and are registered to vote, you need to make sure to do your homework and then hit the poll on the 7th!

To do your homework, I advise you to go to DON'T VOTE and you can find out there who is running in your area for which elections. Then, you can click on each of the candidates campaign websites from there and see where they stand on the issues that are important to you. THAT is the homework that you need to do before you vote--DON'T VOTE without it!!

I end with these numbers: the "DON'T VOTE" link is now on here 5 times. 100% of the people who read this who have NOT voted yet SHOULD click on one of these 5 links and at LEAST visit it to make sure they know all the elections that are going to be presented to them when they go to vote, even if they think they know who they're voting for already in all the elections. One quick stop can't hurt 'em!

Best wishes to you and your candidates in the upcoming elections!
GO DO YOUR HOMEWORK AND VOTE, AMERICA!

Suicide (Part II)

Sunday I posted the first part of this series on suicide talking about a client I recently had who had suicidal ideation. Today I am posting the second part to this series, which was my main inspiration behind writing this series in the first place. The material used to write this entry comes from the ABC News 20/20 program I accidentally came across when flipping channels Friday night. A portion of that program was covering a controversial documentary which will be released to limited cities around the country on this Friday. The film is entitled The Bridge and it is the project of a man by the name of Eric Steel. Not only is the material with which the film is centered around being noted as controversial, but so is the means by which Steel went about getting the material to put the film together. Let me explain…

The Bridge is a 90-plus minute documentary centered about the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California. For those not too familiar with this bridge, it was opened in 1937, and it is over a mile long spanning over the San Francisco Bay. The roadway on the bridge skies some 220 feet above the surface of the water below. Quite a fall if you were to slip off, but unfortunately, more than 1,200 individuals have experienced that 4-second fall since the bridge opened. This number represents the number of individuals who have done more than “slip” off the edge—in their minds it was a jump.

The Golden Gate Bridge has been a popular means for suicidal individuals completing their plan for ending their lives. As mentioned, more than 1,200 have taken advantage of the near-guaranteed death. With the 220 foot fall taking a mere 4-seconds, the body is calculated at hitting the surface of the water below at going approximately 75-miles per hour. At speeds like that, death is only a splash away. So, as a glorious monument that tourists by the thousands visit on a regular basis, it also has it’s dark hidden secret—or at least hidden until Steel decided to shed some light on the matter…

The Bridge was Steel’s project inspired by his drive to get a better understanding of “the human spirit in crisis.” So, after years of planning, he and his crew set up cameras in January 2004 at the park located near the bridge. They kept their cameras rolling for 365 days, gathering the “activity” that took place on the bridge for the full year of 2004. When they had shut off their cameras, they had footage of 24 suicides.

He had footage of individuals who paced up and down the bridge for more than 30-minutes before making the move to end their life.

He had footage of individuals who sat on the railing for minutes before making the final gesture over.

He had footage of individuals who walked up to the edge and simply climbed over immediately like there was nothing left to cross their mind.

He even got footage of a man up on the bridge taken photographs when a lady climbed over the railing in front of him and before she could step off the ledge, the photographer grabbed her and pulled her back over and sat on her until authorities could arrive. A life saved, for the moment at least. The camera crew caught the same woman coming back to the bridge multiple times after then. It was then that the crew would make the call to the bridge authorities their selves.

This was one of the rules Steel’s crew had, and that was if they noted an individual who seemed suspicious in the sense that they believed the person might be there to commit suicide, they would call the bridge authorities immediately. Unfortunately, some people’s last moment behaviors are not predictable.

So, after recording the actual footage of the deaths, Steel’s next step was to talk to the families who were left behind after the suicides. He recorded interviews with these individuals questioning them about the behaviors of their loved ones leading up to the suicide, as well as asking about their feelings toward the act that is noted as selfish.

So Steel gathered his footage—individuals taking their own lives and family and friends reactions to the behaviors.

Many have argued that it is unethical and wrong to video people taking their own lives—and even worse to make it into a documentary for others to witness. The talk about this film has already begun, but the controversy only begins there…

As previously mentioned, Steel took methods for gaining the footage in what is being viewed as controversial as well. First, when Steel got the permit to set up his crew to tape the bridge in the park, he was not clear about why he wanted to film the bridge. There was no mention to the filming purpose being to shoot a documentary about suicides committing at the mercy of the Bay below. If that did not raise enough questions from his critics, his choice to interview the friends and families left behind without mentioning to them that he had the suicides recorded inflamed the questioning.

To the questioning Steel has consistently responded with his defense that he did not want word to get out during the filming of the project about WHAT the project was about in fear that it would give others an encouragement to go ahead with their suicidal plans in efforts to be a part of the film.

So, does what will the country make of this documentary film? Will the suicide rate at The Golden Gate Bridge increase? Will it raise awareness to friends and families about individuals at risk of suicide and possibly help professionals and others in better assessing for at-risk suicidal clients; therefore, causing the suicide rate to decline? Will suicide prevention increase? Will America take a closer look at the issue of suicide and talk surrounding the subject will become less taboo?

Who knows what will happen, but one San Francisco native and Golden Gate Bridge jumper and SURVIVOR supports the film and is featured among the interview footage…

Kevin Hines, now 25 years old, is one of the FEW who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge and has lived to tell his story. Suffering from a depressive state due to his bipolar disorder, Kevin made the decision to jump back in September of the year 2000. He remembers backing away from the railing and running and jumping and then in the beginning of the 4-second fall thinking to himself, I don’t want to die. In the remaining time he immediately threw his head back, hoping to not hit the water head first and remained conscious after hitting the water. Though suffered two shattered vertebrae as a result of the impact, without the aid of his legs, Kevin was able to somehow swim up toward the light with just his arms. Six years later, Kevin reports he is living a stable live while taking his bipolar medications and makes a career with his father working on suicide prevention in the San Francisco area.

So who knows? Who knows what cities and places will be willing to show this documentary. Who knows how many people will pay to see it. Who knows how it will affect human behavior in San Francisco, as well as around the country…

But one thing that the 20/20 program ended the segment with is for sure—the lobbying that has been going on for YEARS to get the railing on the bridge raised to prevent suicidal jumpers, has apparently begun to pay off. Information was shared that a contract company has already been hired and is in the progress of drawing up blueprints and releasing a monetary figure to the Bridge authorities soon.

Could this film have been the straw that broke the camel’s back? Might preventive measures be taken now to save lives above the quiet and yet desperation-filled Bay?

Only time will tell…

----------------------------------------

So what do you think? Was Steel’s idea for a documentary going too far? Should individuals taking their own lives be recorded and played for others to see? Are the educational and hopeful-repercussions of this film worth the controversial stand? Is suicide a taboo topic that should remain that way?

I won’t share much of my thoughts at this point in time, but I will say this…

I already looked and the film is not schedule to be in the Dallas area anytime soon (if ever) as far as my knowledge. If it was, I would already have marked my calendar.

**You can check out more online coverage of this film, Steel, and the controversy surrounding it at this or this website.

It's Monday! YOU Do the Math!

This week's statistics I am taking from my television watching over this past week...

• On Tuesday, October 17, 2006 at 7:46 AM (eastern time) the population of the U.S. was believed to hit 300,000,000. This statistic is based on estimates of how many babies are born, how many people die, and how many illegal aliens move into our country per minute.
• This statistic helped to arrive at the above statistic: Every 60 seconds 6 more illegal aliens join the U.S. population.

[The above statistics were stated on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric on 10-17-2006]

• 82% of Americans are on at least one medication.
• 30% of Americans are on 5 or more medications.

[The above statistics were stated on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric on 10-17-2006]

--The above statistics remind me once again at how dependent our society is on medicine. I've never been a big fan of medication. I personally have taken a VERY limited number of medicines in my lifetime. But I will admit that with my current internship I am believing more and more in the power of medications and the requirement of some medications in some instances (i.e. SEVERE mental illness)

• The National Alliance for Caregiving states that some 1.4 million CHILDREN in the United States are living as the primary caregiver in their household.

[The above statistic was taken from the Oprah episode on 10-20-06]

--The Oprah episode that this statistic was taken from was very eye-opening. Many children are put in the position of raising their younger siblings. This occurs when parents are unable to provide and care for the children due to instances such as handicaps, medical illness, or drug addictions. And in some of these cases, the child is not only "raising" their fellow siblings, but also caring for the parent many times. 13 year olds get up a 6 AM to COOK breakfast, pack lunches, get younger siblings up and dressed and off to school. Then they come home and make sure dinner is fed and showers are taken and teeth are brushed. 13 years old! Some 9 year olds are taking care of their single-parent mothers who are deaf and suffer from cerebal palsy. Children taking on the responsibilities of adults are young, young ages.

The final statistics I gained this past week while watching television are linked to the most interesting television program I watched all week. This was not a scheduled program for me to watch; I just kind of happened across it Friday night, but for that I was REALLY glad. This final program and statistics will be shared tomorrow in the second part to my series on suicide. The statistics will be surprising, but the topic surrounding the statistics will be controversal and intriguing.

Suicide (Part I)

It’s a touchy subject for some. Some reading this have had someone close to them end their life by suicide. Even more know someone who has attempted suicide.

I’ve been fortunate and my connections to the topic of suicide are less personal; however, I have had the opportunity to do a bit of studying through my academic career on the topic. It is a fascinating topic to human behavior analysts.

And while it is fascinating to me to study the human reasoning for leading up to suicidal attempts, at the same time it is a scary topic to be dealing with as a mental health provider…

It is said that mental health providers have the highest rate among career professionals for committing suicide. I find that interesting.

[Story] One of the psychiatrist residents working on a mental health team with me this past semester in my internship had a close friend who also was a psychiatrist resident commit suicide during the time we were working together on the team. The resident on our team had to take a good amount of time off to grieve because of the loss. I mean this resident’s friend was a resident psychiatrist as well. There isn’t many better paying careers than being a psychiatrist, but this individual still reached the point of feeling like suicide was his/her best option. This sheds light on the fact that the act of taking one’s own life is not limited to any one race of people, or one career type, or one gender, or one socio-economic class. Anyone can be at risk of falling into this downward spiral of cognitive reasoning…

It is said that one of the most difficult situations to deal with as a mental health provider is the suicide of a client. This makes sense to me.

[Story] My most admired professor during my graduate degree program spoke to us in class one day about how he had a client who had met with him in a counseling session one day and was depressed. That evening the client ended up committing suicide. The client had mentioned my professor in a manner that was not so encouraging in the suicide note. My professor explained to our class how that was an incredibly difficult time for him following the death, and that he even had to take some time off from his private practice to cope. He mentioned that he had to turn to a fellow colleague during the trying time to help him to get through the situation.

Though I wish I did, I don’t have a statistic on what is the likelihood of a client committing suicide while under the care of a clinician. I imagine that the statistic is surprisingly high. I say this not because clinicians are not doing their job, but because sometimes suicidal clients are unpredictable. Many times a person will not give hints to their suicidal thoughts. They will choose to keep those thoughts to their selves. Yes, they might obviously be depressed, but is every depressed person suicidal? No.

At the same time, realizing the prevalence of depression among clients and the correlation between clients who commit suicide and their state of mood being depressed, I would be willing to say that my career in the mental health realm will put me in a situation where a client of mine will commit suicide. Unfortunate? Of course. But still likely? Yes.

[The Main Story] Over the past several months I have had my first experiences in the counseling setting. As an intern therapist, I would be providing intervention strategies with clients who were victims of domestic violence and/or sexual assault—individuals who are at HIGH risk for suffering from depression. With this being the case, the topic of assessing clients for suicidal ideation/thoughts and plans is crucial. This was the heavy thought on my mind the whole first week of training. I hadn’t even gotten close to having my first client, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how to properly assess for suicidal thoughts and plans and recalling what the procedure for when you have a suicidal client was. My fellow interns were concerned about remembering which forms to use with which clients and how to best word the questions on the intake form when interviewing clients, but I couldn’t stop focusing on the possibilities for interacting with the suicidal client. It was the last day of training and I remember still having questions in my head on EXACTLY what to do in the situation with a suicidal client, so I broke down and actually spoke up in the training (which is very rare of me, as I’m typically real quiet when first getting to know other adults and professionals). I was given some answers and I was feeling more comfortable. Then my first client came the following week…

Would you believe it that this client had issues with practically EVERYTHING else in the book, but NOT suicide. Phew, it was a sense of relief! I had (somehow) survived my first client (who to this day has been one of my most interesting clients—way to start off with QUITE a character), and made it through the “Have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself or suicidal thoughts in the past” question. Phew. I could breathe a sigh of relief.

Four and a half months worth of clients passed with the closest to a “suicidal client” being the ones who had had thoughts weeks before, but had no plan (which is a “safe” client for release in a clinical setting, though precautions should still be arranged). I hadn’t had to deal with the client yet that we would have to have “hauled off” to the psych. ER because of his/her suicidal thoughts at the present time with plans and means available. But maybe my “luck” was running out…

I had had a good record thus far—hadn’t had a client yet that I was unsure how to handle their response to the suicide questioning during the initial intake assessment. But then my time came. I look back on it now and think at least I DID get this experience BEFORE I left the internship and was out on my own…HA! It was just recently and…

This client admitted to having suicidal thoughts that morning. ^^Thoughts in my head at the time: Geez, why did it have to be just this morning that you were having the thoughts?! Why not like weeks ago or months ago like everyone else?! Okay, be cool. Lets assess for if the client has a plan and/or means^^

I had a struggle with getting out of the client whether a plan did or didn’t exist, but the answers I kept getting from the client was that the plan that had been planned to be used months ago was no longer an option, so currently a plan did not exist. ^^Great, so does that mean the client is plan-less and safe to go?!?! How come these real client sessions go NOTHING like the role-play scenarios we do in preparation for the “real thing??!!?” Okay, let’s keep assessing and just make sure…^^

We had somehow gotten off the topic of suicide and were talking about narrowly-connected topics. ^^Why had I waited to address the suicide question until the last minute in the session?!?! Because you hadn’t had any issues with it arise in the past with clients, so you figured this one would go down just like the rest, but boy, were you wrong. Now look—your 45 minute session is pushing an hour and 15 minutes. You’ve got to figure out whether this client has to be “hauled off” or is safe to leave!^^

At this point, after talked around and about with the suicide question for approximately thirty minutes I was feeling like this client was going to be “safe” to let leave after establishing some safety precautions with the client first. But then at the same time, who wants the thoughts of “what if” looming over their head ALONE as a young student?!?! So I did what any good student intern would have done…lied. HA! I basically led the client to believe the session was over, when I knew I had a “second part” about to occur.

[Note to self: Way to encourage the trusting relationship between the therapist and the client right off the bat in the first session. We’ll see how the trust aspect works out if the client even decides to come back to see you now! Crap! HA!]

I took the client back out to the waiting room telling them I was getting their discharge paperwork following the session put together and then we would go to the secretary and schedule our next appointment together. This was when I made a break for one of my supervisors’ offices (hey, it was a new client—they had no idea where the copy machine was located in the building. As far as they knew, I could have been heading in that direction to get their paperwork ready…HA!). In a matter of a couple of minutes I was asking the client to come back into the counseling room with me. At this point, my supervisor joined us in session and we went over our concerns with the client about their safety. Within 3 or 4 minutes my supervisor had established a sense of the client’s suicidal thoughts/ideation and then my supervisor left the room, giving me the “okay” to release the client.

Phew! I had made the right decision in the first place (but it never hurts to have the supervisor’s stamp-of-approval when you’ve only been in the business for a few months). HA!

So there it was—my first “suicidal client.” Well, I suppose I haven’t had the client yet that I HAVE had to have “hauled off,” but this was close enough for me for now. After getting the approval from the supervisor and then scheduling the client an appointment to see one of our staffed psychiatrists, I felt a lot more comfortable with releasing the client on their way. Let’s just hope the psychiatrist can get this client on some medication that will help with the desperate thoughts they had been experiencing.

[Part II of this series on suicide will be posted on Tuesday. Please return then for a controversial talk concerning the topic]