Assessment and Prevention Treatment Guidance Plan for the Danger of Suicide and Homicide

Author: (American) Klotz
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-07-01
Features: In recent years, there has been a very noticeable trend in the development of psychotherapy in the United States—the time required for therapy has gradually shortened, the description of the therapeutic process has become increasingly clear, and the goals of therapy have been explicitly defined before the start of psychotherapy. Overall, psychotherapy is gradually becoming "scientificized." The emergence of short-term psychoanalytic therapy, the prosperity of cognitive-behavioral therapy, and the increasing demands for treatment plans are all results of this "scientificization" trend. These changes are largely due to pressure from paying insurance companies. In our country, although there is currently no such pressure, psychotherapy is becoming more operational and understandable, which is more beneficial for psychotherapy practitioners in China to learn and teach psychotherapy techniques. Suicide and homicide are pathological behaviors closely related to mental disorders and require high attention from mental health workers. In fact, almost all mental health workers may encounter issues of suicide and homicide with their clients in their daily work. In the past two decades, in some major and medium-sized cities in China, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Changsha, and Shenzhen, organizations like crisis intervention centers and suicide prevention centers have been established. However, overall, the theoretical and practical levels of mental health workers regarding behavioral problems like suicide and homicide still need improvement. After publishing a series of influential theoretical books on psychotherapy and psychological counseling, China Light Industry Press began organizing the translation of part of the "Psychotherapy Guidance Plans" series from John Wiley & Sons at the end of last year and hopes that we can translate the book "Assessment and Prevention Treatment Guidance Plan for Suicide and Homicide Risk." We believe that treatment plans are a concentrated manifestation of the new trends in the development of psychotherapy. This book not only helps suicide prevention and crisis intervention professionals in China better carry out psychotherapy for suicide prevention but also provides all psychotherapy professionals with insights into how to apply treatment plans to improve their psychotherapy. The original book consists of 27 chapters, but since 8 of them involve issues related to different ethnic groups, such as "Asian Americans" and "Hispanic Americans," which are not suitable for the conditions in our country, we selected 19 chapters for translation, forming this book. It should be noted that the translation of the term "client" in this book. In China, it is often translated as "patient," "" (), "consultant," etc. We believe that "patient" fails to reflect the uniqueness of psychological counseling and psychotherapy, equating the recipients of psychotherapy services with mental disorder patients; "" () does not highlight the characteristic of seeking help; and "consultant" easily confuses the service providers and recipients. Therefore, the translation of this book uniformly uses the term "help-seeker." The authors of this book have long been engaged in clinical psychotherapy for suicide and homicide risk individuals in the United States, possessing both a high theoretical level and rich practical experience. In this book, they categorize suicide and homicide risk individuals into different groups based on the focus of clinical treatment, rather than classifying them according to clinical diagnoses, as we are familiar with. This is because even if the diagnosis is the same, such as depression, the psychological issues of help-seekers vary greatly. For each group, they propose specific behavioral definitions, assessments, interventions, and both long-term and short-term treatment goals to facilitate reader use. Therefore, we believe that this book can serve as both a reference book for advanced-level suicide prevention and crisis intervention professionals and a tool for all mental health workers to learn about writing treatment plans and treating help-seekers with suicide and homicide risks.