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Assessment

What’s new with the DSM-5-TR?

By Aaron L. Norton September 29, 2022

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, image via Flickr

Image via Flickr http://bit.ly/2lfWuka

Traditionally, our holistic emphasis on a wellness model as opposed to a medical model has been touted as a unique aspect of our professional identity as counselors. Many counselors feel more comfortable with humanistic, existentialist and postmodern theories that seem to clash with the medical model. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), is one of the most salient symbols of that model, so why should we care about it?

The ability to diagnose using a medical model is integral to much of what we want for our profession, such as Medicare parity, licensure portability, fair and equal access to psychological tests, and integrated care. For this reason, counseling associations have advocated relentlessly for state legislators to include the diagnosis of mental disorders in the scope of practice of licensed counselors.

According to the National Conference of State Legislature’s Scope of Practice Policy website, 36 states and U.S. territories specifically include diagnosis in behavioral health providers’ scope of practice, and an additional 19 states and U.S. territories neither empower nor prohibit counselors from diagnosis.

This diagnostic power conferred by the state comes with great responsibility, and the 2014 ACA Code of Ethics calls on counselors to diagnose properly (see Standard E.5.a.). The DSM is the most widely recognized diagnostic system for mental disorders. Although the DSM is imperfect and flawed, and there are alternative ways of conceptualizing mental health, it is nonetheless important for counselors to have a working knowledge of it.

In the following sections, I explore some common questions counselors have about the latest edition, the DSM-5-TR, which was published in May.

 

Why DSM-5-TR? Why not DSM-6?

The “TR” stands for “text revision.” Essentially, this means that APA intended to update the research components of the text and clarify some of the diagnostic criteria, but there were not enough advances in the field to support the need for the creation, revision and elimination of multiple disorders. The DSM-5 was published in 2013, and the research and statistical data contained in the manual are now outdated. The DSM-5-TR provides updated data consistent with research published since 2013.

How was DSM-5-TR developed? Were any counselors involved?

The DSM-5-TR revision started in the spring of 2019, and the final version was published in March. The DSM-5-TR specifically includes counselors in a list of professionals the text was written for, but were any counselors involved in the revision itself?

Over 200 multidisciplinary subject matter experts were involved in the revision — 64% psychiatrists, 30% psychologists and just 6% “other health professionals.” The text states that “many professional and educational groups were involved in this development and testing of DSM-5, including physicians, psychologists, social workers, nurses, counselors, epidemiologists, statisticians, neuroscientists, and neuropsychologists.” It is unclear how many counselors were involved in the revision, but it does not appear that many were.

Three primary groups were involved in the revision, including the DSM-5 Task Force, DSM Steering Committee and Revision Subcommittee. Experts were divided into 20 disorder review groups, each headed by a section editor. Four cross-cutting review groups (culture, sex and gender, suicide, and forensic) recommended updates throughout the text. Revisions were approved by the APA Board of Trustees, and public feedback was solicited and considered.

Are there any new disorders in DSM-5-TR?

There is only one new disorder in the DSM-5-TR: prolonged grief disorder. It is an updated version of a disorder that we saw in Section III of the DSM-5 (i.e., the section that describes conditions being considered for future editions of the DSM) called persistent complex bereavement disorder. It can now be found in Section II of the DSM-5-TR in the “Trauma and Stressor-Related Disorders” chapter because it is considered a reaction to a trauma or stressor.

The diagnosis of prolonged grief disorder is conceptualized as an intense longing or yearning, often with intense sorrow and emotional pain, for a deceased person close to the bereaved client, accompanied by preoccupation with thoughts or memories of the deceased person. It can only be applied if:

  • the deceased person died more than 12 months ago (for adults) or 6 months ago (for children and adolescents);
  • the client has a persistent grief response present on most days “to a clinically significant degree” (e.g., intense longing/yearning for the deceased, preoccupation with thoughts and memories of the deceased);
  • at least three of eight specified symptoms (i.e., identity disruption, marked sense of disbelief about the death, avoidance of reminders about the death, intense emotional pain, difficulty reintegrating into relationships and activities, emotional numbness, feeling that life is meaningless, and intense loneliness) have been present most days to a clinically significant degree;
  • symptoms cause clinically significant impairment or distress;
  • duration and severity of bereavement clearly exceed social, cultural or religious norms; and
  • the disturbance is not better explained by another disorder or the effects of one or more substances.

Its prevalence is unknown, but the DSM-5-TR references a rate of 9.8% with little clarity about that statistic (i.e., whether it is cross-sectional or a lifetime or perhaps 12-month prevalence rate).

Critics of the new disorder voice concerns that grief is being pathologized. Proponents, however, point out that only a small percentage of bereaved clients would meet the diagnostic criteria, the criteria clearly represent an unusual response to grief, individuals who meet criteria respond to specialized therapeutic approaches (i.e., prolonged grief disorder therapy) while their peers with uncomplicated bereavement require less intervention, and those individuals need professional help that might be difficult to access without the construct of a diagnosis.

What about racism, discrimination and cultural considerations? Anything new?

A cross-cutting review committee on cultural issues consisting of 19 U.S. and international-based experts in cultural psychiatry, psychology, and anthropology and an ethnoracial equity and inclusion work group of 10 mental health practitioners from diverse ethnic and racialized backgrounds with expertise in disparity-reduction practices were involved in the development of the DSM-5-TR. Because of their work, several semantic changes were made to the text, including the following:

  • The terms “race” and “racial” were replaced by “racialized” to highlight the socially constructed nature of race.
  • The term “ethnoracial” was used to denote U.S. Census Bureau categories Hispanic, white, or African American that combine ethnic and racialized identifiers.
  • The terms “minority” and “non-white” were avoided, as these terms infer that white is hierarchical to other racial identities, thus perpetuating social hierarchies.
  • The term “Latinx” replaced Latino/Latina in an effort to be sensitive to individuals who do not identify with binary gender markers. This revision may be lauded by transgender advocates but could also be frustrating to many Hispanic Americans who view the term Latinx as a form of colonialist intrusion into their language. Polling data from the Pew Research Center in December 2019 revealed that 76% of Hispanic adults had never heard of the term Latinx, 20% had heard it but didn’t use it, and only 3% used the term. According to an article published in Politico in December 2021, nearly half of Hispanic Americans view the term Latinx as offensive, so the two largest Spanish-speaking television networks in the country opted to replace Latinx with Latino and Latina. In an article published in The Conversation in September, Melissa Ochoa, an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies, reported that the governments of Argentina and Spain released public statements banning use of the term Latinx in July, and the term “Latine” has emerged as a more suitable gender-neutral term to replace the terms Latino and Latina because it does not violate rules of the Spanish language. It will be interesting to see whether Latinx or Latine becomes more widely accepted with time.
  • The term “Caucasian” was replaced with “non-Latinx white.”
  • Throughout the DSM-5-TR, prevalence data on specific ethnoracial groups has been included when possible.

What other disorder-related changes were made?

Some relatively minor changes (most of which are semantic) were made for a few other disorders. In my opinion, one of the most important changes involves the creation of diagnostic codes for suicidal behavior and nonsuicidal self-injury, which will allow for more effective tracking of these conditions. Other changes include the following:

  • The DSM-5 contained two sets of codes next to each disorder: the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) and Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes. Because all U.S. health care providers regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act were supposed to transition to ICD-10 codes on Oct. 1, 2015, the ICD-9 codes have all been removed from the text.
  • The Criterion A phrase “as manifested by the following” for autism spectrum disorder was replaced with “as manifested by all of the following” to maintain high diagnostic threshold.
  • Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder was clarified as diagnosable between ages 6 and 18.
  • The note “witnessing does not include events that are witnessed only in electronic media, television, movies, or pictures” in Criterion A2 of posttraumatic stress disorder was removed for children 6 years and younger due to redundancy.
  • The phrase “with relatively intact reality testing” was removed from attenuated psychosis syndrome, and symptoms were described more accurately.
  • A new set of severity descriptors was added to bipolar disorder.
  • The phrase “reduced orientation to the environment” for delirium was replaced with “accompanied by reduced awareness of the environment.”
  • Conversion disorder was renamed as functional neurological symptom disorder.
  • Several terms related to gender dysphoria were altered. Specifically, “desired gender” was replaced with “experienced gender,” “cross-sex medical procedure” was replaced with “gender affirming medical procedure,” “cross-sex hormone treatment” was replaced with “gender affirming hormone treatment,” “natal male” was replaced with “individual assigned male at birth,” “natal female” was replaced with “individual assigned female at birth,” and “differences in sex development” was noted as an alternative term for “disorders of sex development.”
  • For intellectual disorder, renamed intellectual developmental disorder, clarification was provided that although one should not be bound narrowly to the 65-75 IQ score range, the diagnosis would not be appropriate for those with substantially higher IQ scores.
  • For major depressive disorder, the Criterion D phrasing “The occurrence of the major depressive episode is not better explained by schizoaf­fective disorder” was changed to “At least one major depressive episode is not better explained by schizoaffective disorder and is not superimposed on schizophrenia.”
  • Narcolepsy subtypes were revised to harmonize with the third edition of the International Classification of Sleep Disorders and ICD-11.
  • Olfactory reference disorder (olfactory reference syndrome), which the DSM-5 referred to as “Jikoshu-kyofu,” replaced other specified obsessive-compulsive and related disorder to dispel the misunderstanding that the disorder only occurs in Japan.
  • In the third example of other specified bipolar and related disorder, the line “if this occurs in an individual with an established diagnosis of persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia), both diagnoses can be concurrently applied during the periods when the full criteria for a hypomanic episode are met” was deleted because of a conflict with Criterion E for persistent depressive disorder, which states in part that “there has never been a manic episode or a hypomanic episode.”
  • Manic episode superimposed on a psychotic disorder was added as the fifth example of other specified bipolar and related disorder with the intention of being used when other psychotic disorders from the exclusion criterion for Bipolar I and Bipolar II disorders (i.e., schizophrenia, delusional disorder, psychotic disorder not otherwise specified) do not have mood episodes as part of their diagnostic criteria, leaving no way for the mood episodes to be accounted for by the diagnosis.
  • The DSM-5 example of “attenuated delirium syndrome” under other specified delirium was replaced with “subsyndromal delirium.”
  • “Major depressive episode superimposed” was added as a fourth example of other specified depressive disorder for use when a major depressive episode occurs concurrent with a psychotic disorder that does not have mood episodes as part of its diagnostic criteria.
  • The sentence “individuals with atypical anorexia nervosa may experience many of the physiological complications associated with anorexia nervosa” was added to the description of the atypical anorexia nervosa example of other specified feeding or eating disorder to clarify that the presence of physiological consequences during presentation does not mean that the diagnosis is the (typical) anorexia nervosa.
  • In the fourth example of other specified schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorder, the phrase “delusional symptoms in partner of individual with delusional disorder” was changed to “delusional symptoms in the context of relationship with an individual with prominent delusions” to clarify that (a) the “inducer” does not need to have a romantic relationship with the patient and (b) the “inducer” does not necessarily need to have a delusional disorder.
  • For persistent depressive disorder, the parenthetical “dysthymia” was removed to avoid confusion with DSM-IV-TR diagnosis of dysthymic disorder, which could not be diagnosed if the individual had ever met criteria for a major depressive disorder. Additionally, all specifiers were removed except anxious distress and atypical features.
  • The parenthetical “social phobia” in social anxiety disorder was removed.
  • For substance/medication-induced bipolar and related disorder, the DSM-5 Criterion A terminology “prominent and persistent disturbance in mood that predominates in the clinical picture and is characterized by elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, with or without depressed mood” was changed to “prominent and persistent disturbance in mood that predominates in the clinical picture and is characterized by abnormally elevated, expansive, or irritable mood and abnormally increased activity or energy.” Additionally, the DSM-5 Criterion B1 phrase “developed during or soon after substance intoxication or withdrawal or after exposure to a medication” was changed to “developed during or soon after substance intoxication or withdrawal or after exposure to or withdrawal from a medication.”

What changes were made to Section III in DSM-5-TR?

Section III of the DSM-5-TR contains emerging measures and models relevant to the diagnosis and conceptualization of mental disorders. Specifically, it contains several free assessment measures that counselors can use in clinical practice, additional information on cultural considerations for diagnosis, an alternative model for personality disorders, and conditions that are being considered for adoption in future revisions of the DSM. Changes made to Section III include the following:

  • Male and female checkboxes were removed from all assessment measures in a shift away from binary gender identification.
  • Instructions in the Clinician-Rated Dimensions of Psychosis Symptom Severity measure were edited to mirror new severity specifiers for psychotic disorders added to Section II.
  • Scoring instructions for the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 were clarified.
  • Terms such as “culture,” “race” and “ethnicity” were revised in the Cultural Formulation Interview. 

If I already own the DSM-5, do I need to purchase the DSM-5-TR?

Given that the DSM-5-TR contains a new diagnosis and updated research, I recommend obtaining a new copy. However, if you are not concerned with prolonged grief disorder and you do not use the statistical information in the DSM, then you may not have a sense of urgency to purchase the new edition.

Where can I go to learn more?

Here are some resources where you can learn more about the DSM-5-TR:

 

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Aaron L. NortonAaron L. Norton is the executive director of the National Board of Forensic Evaluators, a visiting instructor at the University of South Florida’s Department of Mental Health Law & Policy, and the southern regional director for the American Mental Health Counselors Association.

 

 

 

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

Assessment, diagnosis and treatment planning: A map for the journey ahead

By Bethany Bray September 22, 2021

Clients impart so much about themselves, verbally and nonverbally, in counseling sessions that it will overwhelm clinicians who don’t organize the information and use it to create a structured plan for their work together, contends Nathaniel N. Ivers, associate professor and chair of the Department of Counseling at Wake Forest University.

Fully understanding a client’s situation, symptoms and needs and then matching them with a diagnosis (when appropriate) and a treatment plan that will help them heal, grow and thrive are core aspects of professional counseling. Counselors learn these skills, at least conceptually, in graduate school but gain true understanding of them through their direct work with clients. 

Practically applying that knowledge is “where the rubber hits the road,” says Ivers, a member of the American Counseling Association. Examining a client’s concerns in depth — moving beyond surface-level questions such as “How did this week go?” or “What do you want to talk about?” — is the most integrative and effective way to devise a rich treatment plan and pinpoint a destination that the client and practitioner will work toward together in therapy.

Ivers acknowledges that counselors who are busy with full caseloads may be resistant to the idea of dedicating time to create a comprehensive, integrative plan for each client. But as he tells his students: The more you do it, the easier it will get.

“Eventually, you won’t have to write out a full, multipoint case conceptualization plan for every client,” says Ivers, a licensed professional counselor in Texas and a licensed clinical mental health counselor in North Carolina. “But when you eventually have … trouble figuring out [a case], that’s when you need to fall back on it — put pen to paper and conceptualize a full plan.”

When teaching these concepts to students, Ivers often shares a quote from psychologist Donald Meichenbaum, professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo in Canada and one of the founders of cognitive behavior therapy: “A clinician without a case conceptional model is like a captain of a ship without a rudder, aimlessly floating about with little or no direction.”

An important responsibility

The three components of assessment, diagnosis and treatment planning are intrinsically linked and provide a “map” for counselors to offer evidence-based treatment that best fits the client, says Shannon Karl, an ACA member who is a professor and field-based clinical coordinator in the Department of Counseling at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. Not only is the process vital to establishing a foundation for counseling work with a client, but it also creates a pathway for the individual to access appropriate treatment services from counselors and interdisciplinary professionals.

Assessment, diagnosis and treatment planning are important responsibilities, and mastery of these skills is often closely tied to clinician confidence, Karl says, so it’s understandable that new professionals may worry if they are getting things right. She urges counselors who feel this way to remember that their mentors are there to advise and support them. Similarly, counselor education and supervision programs are meant to help trainees through this learning curve, she says.

Even so, both novice and experienced counselors should seek continuing education, peer consultation and mentorship in these areas throughout their careers, stresses Karl, co-author of the ACA-published book DSM-5 Learning Companion for Counselors. It is imperative for counselors to keep these skills sharp and up to date, not only because they are integral parts of the counseling process but also because diagnoses and related criteria are constantly changing and evolving.

Karl was on an ACA task force formed to study the updates and changes introduced in the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 2013. She was dismayed, she says, to see how long it took many counseling practices to update their procedures to reflect the changes made between the fourth and fifth editions of the DSM.

Karl urges clinicians to stay informed and up to date by attending workshops, conferences and other continuing education events; consulting regularly with professional peers; seeking mentorship or supervision; joining professional Listservs; and reading counseling journals and other publications. Remaining active with state and local counseling organizations will also help practitioners stay abreast of criteria and processes that vary state to state, she notes. Leadership within the counseling profession must ensure that funding for continuing education on assessment, diagnosis and treatment planning is prioritized, especially for counselors in economically disadvantaged or rural areas and settings where practices or clinics are short-staffed, Karl adds.

“One thing we can do at all levels is make sure that clinicians have access to free or reduced-cost continuing education, workshops and seminars. Accessibility is important,” says Karl, a licensed mental health counselor whose area of focus is childhood trauma and DSM-5 disorders. “It’s important for professional counselors, regardless of work setting, to be able to best serve their clients, and one way to do that is to be active in learning regarding assessment, diagnosis and best treatment planning. We can’t help others heal in isolation.”

Danica Hays, author of the ACA-published book Assessment in Counseling: Procedures and Practices, notes that counseling graduate students often take only one class each on assessment and diagnosis. Continuing education, in addition to competency gained through experience, is needed to round out counselors’ knowledge, she says.

“With the amount of material to cover, [counselor graduate education] lessons are often distilled to case conceptualization and treatment planning as simply following a recipe,” says Hays, a professor and dean of the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Gaining comprehensive knowledge that includes “other ways of knowing — often from scholars and practitioners of color — can be incredibly helpful to ensure clients are not harmed by an incomplete and/or distorted story told on their behalf,” she adds.

Client driven

Tracie Keller, a licensed professional clinical counselor and supervisor in Ohio, has found that teaming directly with the client to identify goals and build a treatment plan strengthens the level of trust and rapport between clinician and client, which in turn improves treatment outcomes. She chooses to highlight this collaborative approach on the website for her group practice in Columbus, Ohio, by including the following statement: “We believe that treatment planning is a process that both the therapist and the client determine together.” 

Keller tries to think about the process from the client’s perspective. She notes that if she went to a medical doctor and the doctor prescribed a treatment plan and medication without bothering to tell her that she had the flu, she’d question what was going on and whether the doctor valued her input.

Keller, who specializes in treating clients with eating disorders and trauma-related concerns, says a prescriptive approach has never really worked for her. “[Clients know] themselves the best,” she says. “For me, it [collaborative treatment planning] is something that helps build a lot of trust. It’s not just prescribing ‘this is what I want you to do,’ but instead walking alongside [clients] to execute the goals they want. … If the client doesn’t buy in, [counseling] won’t be successful.”

Hays notes that involving clients in case conceptualization and treatment planning also allows for better cultural understanding and responsiveness. Counselors have a significant responsibility to get a client’s story right, she says, and “getting the story right involves co-constructing it with the client in a way that honors their cultural experiences as well as points of trauma and resilience.”

“Really good assessment is committing to gather a client’s story with that client, engaging in basic helping skills to affirm what the client is sharing as they share it, incorporating multiple qualitative and quantitative tools in the process, and proposing and evaluating treatment approaches with the client,” Hays asserts. “Thus, assessment may not involve many questions but [rather] more space within sessions for the client to share their stories, with the power and voice to confirm or disconfirm an evolving conceptualization of those stories.”

When Keller begins working with a new client, she listens carefully as they talk through their history and symptoms. Possible diagnoses and issues to work on in counseling often become apparent to Keller as she listens, but she stores those ideas away for the time being. Instead, she prompts the client to think of treatment goals, asking questions such as “If you could change anything in your life through our work together, what would that be?” or “What would you want to be different in your life after our relationship concludes?”

Clients presenting with symptoms of an eating disorder might respond with statements such as “I don’t want to fight my body anymore” or “I’m sick of hating my body,” Keller says. In this example, Keller and the client might work together to create a goal of improving the client’s body image in counseling. Later, once the client has made some progress on that goal and established a stronger therapeutic relationship with Keller, she will circle back to some of the issues that revealed themselves in the initial assessment session and try to tie those issues into the client’s treatment goals. If the client mentioned purging behavior or restrictive eating in the initial session, for example, Keller might gently raise the idea that this behavior could be something to work on as part of reaching the client’s goal of obtaining a healthy body image.

Because Keller accepts insurance at her practice, she diagnoses all of her clients to submit for reimbursement. Keller lets each client know that she will share their diagnosis with their insurance company, and she dedicates time to explaining the diagnosis to the client and how she arrived at that decision. Depending on the client, she sometimes takes out her copy of the DSM-5 in session and looks through the diagnosis criteria with them.

“I talk about it from the start because they’re in a very vulnerable space [at intake], and it’s important to be really transparent about what their diagnosis is and what it means,” Keller says. She never moves forward with a treatment plan or diagnosis unless a client agrees to it.

After talking through the diagnosis with the client, she explains the methods and tools she uses (such as cognitive behavior therapy or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) to treat that particular diagnosis and how she will tailor her approach to help the client meet the treatment goals they have identified.

A large portion of the initial goal-setting and therapeutic work with clients is frequently focused on reducing symptoms, Keller notes. As treatment progresses, she works with clients to shift or change treatment goals to move beyond symptom management and to focus on the issues that lie beneath their original presenting concern.

For example, a client with chronic depression might first identify goals that involve improving their mood and alleviating their symptoms. Later, as their symptoms lessen and the client is feeling better, they could be ready to focus on past trauma or relationship issues that they didn’t have the bandwidth to tackle earlier, Keller says. 

She finds this process often happens organically; the “win” of seeing symptoms lessen often motivates clients to identify additional goals. “It’s cool because you have a lot of trust and past success in therapy [at that point] to go off of, and the client often wants to dig deeper and make greater changes,” Keller says.

Client treatment plans need to evolve and stay flexible because clients’ needs will change throughout therapy. Keller notes that it is common for individuals with eating disorders to experience periods when their symptoms worsen, sometimes to the point of needing hospitalization or inpatient care. Whenever this happens, Keller works with the client to shift their treatment plan and identify different goals for the near future, and then they repeat the process after the client has been discharged or their situation has otherwise improved.

Assessment shouldn’t be limited to the initial and concluding sessions with a client. As Keller points out, an important part of this process is being attuned to a client’s needs and blending assessment work into each session. She says that she continually listens for short- and long-term treatment goals.

“As you go on through treatment, you’re getting information [from the client] with each session,” Keller says. “As you walk with them, you’re learning more and more: how they relate to you, how they relate to other people. You can’t ignore that information. It will guide you. I’m constantly assessing and holding that information.”

Keller acknowledges that her understanding of the treatment planning process has expanded over time. “Now it’s a process that is pulled up in my mind during every single session — not just at intake and conclusion,” she says. “Even if I don’t verbalize it with the client, I’m thinking of every conversation through the lens of their goals. It becomes an unspoken but ever-so-present aspect of the work, and it moves it along.”

Diagnosis: A love-hate relationship

Many professional counselors have mixed feelings about diagnosis. On one hand, it can be a tool that connects clients with the mental health care they need. On the other hand, it can be viewed (both by clinicians and clients) as a “label” that follows clients throughout treatment and, in some cases, life.

Keller says she understands both sides; however, she values diagnosis and finds it useful. Diagnosis is a tool that allows her to understand how she can initially help her clients, and it guides her interventions and therapeutic approach as treatment progresses. It can also remove financial barriers to mental health care. Counseling can be expensive, and insurance companies typically require a diagnosis for reimbursement. So, Keller views diagnosis as a way of providing treatment access for clients who wouldn’t be able to afford counseling without insurance coverage. 

The key, Keller says, is to be fully transparent with clients and include them in the diagnostic process, especially for diagnoses that can carry a stigma, such as personality disorders, substance use disorders and eating disorders. In some cases, counselors may need to offer psychoeducation to dispel inaccuracies or stereotypes about a diagnosis.

“I can have a love-hate relationship with it [diagnosis] at times,” Keller admits. “It can have a stigma and the burden of sharing it with insurance. … Oftentimes in therapy, we end up having to process and unpack a lot, [including] what they [clients] have heard and experienced in carrying that diagnosis. If I can be involved in that process with them and acknowledge the stigma, I can help them.”

Ivers says there can be limits to diagnosis, including when clients develop a sense of dependency on their diagnosis or use it as a “crutch.” But as a whole, he finds that the process of diagnosis generally encourages counselors to seek out best practices, research and resources to help and support their clients.

“We have to be cautious that we don’t reduce people to their diagnosis,” Ivers warns. “But for others, finally receiving a name for the cluster of symptoms they’re experiencing can be a relief. It also can open them up to treatment and connect them with you [their counselor] or other practitioners who can help for their specific concern, [including] prescribing medication.”

Karl agrees that one benefit of diagnosis is that it often helps connect clients to interdisciplinary treatment. Even if a counselor is not required to assign diagnoses to clients, they need to have a “comfortable awareness” and foundational knowledge of the diagnosis process and be able to triage clients to connect them to further treatment if needed, Karl says. Screening skills and competency regarding diagnosis are also a requirement for counselor licensure in many states and therefore something to keep oneself updated on through continuing education, she adds.

Diagnosis also requires counselors to know how to use the DSM. Karl advises clinicians to become comfortable with looking things up in the manual and knowing where to turn when they have questions or need more information, rather than trying to memorize its contents.

Additionally, there are certain conditions mentioned in the DSM that counselors would not be involved in diagnosing, such as neurodevelopmental disorders. Because counselors will often be included in treatment plans for clients with those types of diagnoses, however, they still need to be proficient enough to have an understanding of any DSM diagnosis and its best treatment practices, even if they do not diagnose the client themselves, Karl notes.

Trying to remember all the nuances of the diagnoses in the DSM is “setting yourself up for failure,” Karl says. The DSM-5 contains more than 1,000 pages and hundreds of diagnoses. Even if clinicians were able to remember everything the manual contains, revisions and updates are made to the information regularly. For that reason, Karl urges counselors to focus on having a core knowledge of the manual, being comfortable enough to use it as a resource and adapting with it as it changes.  

Potential bias

Counselors are human beings with individual personalities and worldviews, so there is always a chance of potential bias creeping into assessment, diagnosis and treatment planning. To avoid this, clinicians must diligently reflect on their biases and really think about their assessment questions and diagnosis processes, says Ivers, who presented the session “Using Case Conceptualization to Navigate the Turbulent Waters of the Human Condition” at ACA’s 2018 Conference & Expo.

Ivers stresses that counselors need to critically examine why they are asking what they are asking — and what they are not asking. “If a client is acknowledging some of the cultural struggles they’re facing and we skirt those issues and do not focus on them,” he says, “what we’re telling them is that it’s not therapeutically important.”

“Case conceptualization is a tool, and when used effectively, it can be extremely helpful,” Ivers notes. “But when used ineffectively, it can be hurtful and damaging. In the case of culture, it can actively discriminate and misalign. It can [cause a clinician to] try and fit a client into a mold.”

Clinicians must also keep in mind that assessment and diagnostic tools can have an innate bias. Models often have a “cultural flavor” and are based on what is traditional (or Westernized) rather than on what is deviant or nondominant, Ivers says. He teaches Jon and Len Sperry’s case conceptualization method to his students at Wake Forest. One of the benefits of the model, Ivers says, is that it allows for flexibility and modification based on a client’s cultural factors. (For more information, read Jon and Len Sperry’s Counseling Today article “Case conceptualization: Key to highly effective counseling.”)

“There are evidenced differences in how symptoms are expressed culture to culture and, thus, individuals do not neatly fit in diagnostic or treatment ‘boxes.’ Fostering one’s competency is embracing these tensions,” says Hays, who is an ACA fellow.

She points out that research shows there are disproportionate rates of mental health issues among people of marginalized statuses. “The question has been whether differences in diagnostic rates — based in case conceptualization — are actual differences among cultural groups or whether they are a result of faulty assessment and diagnostic processes on the part of the counselor,” Hays says. “The answer is likely a little of both. Counselor cultural bias does substantially shape assessment and treatment, and experiences of privilege, oppression, trauma and resilience shape what symptoms are presented.”

Keller acknowledges that the potential for practitioner bias in assessment, diagnosis and treatment planning is one of the messiest aspects of professional counseling. What she finds invaluable in this realm is seeking feedback through regular consultation with professional peers as well as attending counseling herself. 

Personal counseling and professional consultation allow Keller to process things, identify her “blind spots” and work through her own biases, “so they don’t come out in the counseling room,” she says. “The last thing I want is for my stuff to affect [my client’s] stuff.”

Ivers admits it is “inherently reductionistic” to take all the information that a counselor gleans from a client through the therapeutic relationship and organize it into a treatment model and plan. There is no way to keep from losing data as the counselor processes all the information, he says.

“Therefore, it’s important to remain flexible and be aware that there can be blind spots,” Ivers advises. “You’re never going to get it 100 percent right, and that’s why we [counselors] are always reassessing and modifying a treatment plan. But you’re hopefully on the right path.”

A career-long learning curve

It’s not easy to competently assess what a client needs and then match those needs with an accurate and responsive treatment plan that will help the person to heal. Therefore, counselors find themselves continually developing and strengthening these skills over the entire course of their careers. 

Keller says it remains her goal to grow her skills in assessment, diagnosis and treatment planning over the decades to come with the mission of better serving her clients. “To be an effective counselor is to trust and to be OK with always learning and pushing ourselves to grow,” Keller says. “If I stop doing that, I probably shouldn’t be practicing anymore. Counseling is a process that I have to be willing to grow and change and evolve with — just as clients do. [Counselors should] trust that wherever you’re at in your professional journey, it’s OK — and it’s good even — to be learning.”

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Wrestling with a client’s previous diagnosis

It’s not uncommon for counselors to see clients who have received a prior diagnosis from another clinician. If the client comes via referral, the counselor may have case notes that include the diagnosis in writing. In other situations, a client might report to the counselor that they were told they have a certain diagnosis. This introduces the possibility that the client might have misunderstood or misremembered clinical terms that they heard from the other practitioner or found on the internet.

So, what happens if the counselor, after getting to know the client, disagrees with the previous diagnosis? It’s a common scenario, says Shannon Karl, a licensed mental health counselor and professor at Nova Southeastern University. She urges counselors to remember that individuals grow and change, so a diagnosis shouldn’t stay static. A previous diagnosis may no longer be relevant or applicable for a client, especially if it’s more than a few years old.

Counselors need to come to their own conclusions about a client without allowing a previous diagnosis to color their assessment, Karl says.

Danica Hays, a professor and dean of the College of Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, suggests that practitioners ask the client questions to get additional information about a past diagnosis, including how (and by whom) it was made, how the client feels about the diagnosis, the extent to which the client still identifies with the diagnosis, and how or if they feel that the diagnosis led to finding support to address their symptoms.

“Given the inevitable role of bias in clinical decision-making, counselors should always be cautious when a client presents a treatment history in which they were diagnosed a particular way,” Hays says. “It is important that counselors not quickly jump to a diagnosis based on what has been diagnosed before. This is a clear example of the improper ways that cognitive tools are used to yield misdiagnosis and client maltreatment.”

A counselor’s role also includes ensuring that a client feels heard and trusted when they talk about previous diagnoses or conditions that they think they have but that have yet to be diagnosed, adds Tracie Keller, a licensed professional clinical counselor.

“I try and hold that [information] with respect and honor, but at the same time, I do my own assessment and treatment plan based on what I’m hearing,” says Keller, who owns a counseling practice in Columbus, Ohio. “I use that as a jumping-off point to garner further questions, [as] a starting point to dig deeper.”

Karl once worked as a mental health counselor in a pain clinic where she had the freedom to have an initial session with clients before she opened and reviewed the individual’s records. “Clients really valued that I wanted to take a few minutes to hear it [their mental health history] from them,” Karl says. “They knew they had the chance to share their story with me without any filters.”

Karl acknowledges that this will not be possible for most counselors. However, she urges clinicians to find ways to hear a client’s backstory in their own words, even if they know the client’s diagnosis and case history before the person walks in the door.

“We need to preserve the ability to hear clients’ stories from them,” Karl says. “Keep in mind that we are not defined by our diagnoses; we grow and evolve in positive directions. What was happening previously doesn’t mean it’s happening now. Be aware that assessment is a continual, ongoing process, and a diagnosis is never set in stone. If we come from that lens, it helps us see clients for who they are as opposed to what they’re tagged with.”

 

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Bethany Bray is a senior writer and social media coordinator for Counseling Today. Contact her at bbray@counseling.org.

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

Taking a strengths-based approach to suicide assessment and treatment

By John Sommers-Flanagan and Rita Sommers-Flanagan July 7, 2021

When the word “suicide” comes up during counseling sessions, it usually triggers clinician anxiety. You might begin having thoughts such as, “What should I ask next? How can I best evaluate my client’s suicide risk? Should I do a formal suicide assessment, or should I be less direct?” In addition, you might worry about possible hospitalization and how to make the session therapeutic while also assessing risk. 

Suicide-related scenarios are stressful and emotionally activating for all mental health, school and health care professionals. Counselors are no exception. But counselors bring a different orientation into the room. As a discipline, counseling is less steeped in the medical model, more oriented toward wellness, and more relational throughout the assessment and intervention processes. In this article, we explore how professional counselors can meet practice standards for suicide assessment and treatment while also embracing a holistic, strengths-based and wellness orientation.

GoodStudio/Shutterstock.com

Moving beyond traditional views of suicide

Suicide and suicidality have long been linked to negative judgments. Sometimes suicide — or even thinking about suicide — has been characterized as sinful or immoral. In many societies, suicide was historically deigned illegal, and it remains so in some countries today. In the past, suicidality was nearly always pathologized, and that largely remains the case now. Defining suicide and suicidal thoughts as immoral or illegal or as an illness is an alienating and judgmental social construction that makes people less likely to openly discuss these thoughts and feelings. Most people experiencing suicidality already feel bad about themselves; socially sanctioned negative judgments can cause further harm.

Our position is that suicide is neither a moral failure nor evidence of so-called mental illness. Instead, consistent with a strengths-based perspective, we believe suicidal ideation is a normal variation on human experience. Suicidal ideation usually stems from difficult environmental circumstances, social disconnection or excruciating emotional pain. Improving life circumstances, enhancing social connection and reducing emotional pain are usually the best means for reducing the frequency and intensity of suicidal thoughts and feelings. 

Practitioners trained in the medical model tend to diagnose people who are suicidal with some variant of depressive disorder and provide treatments that target suicidality. Sometimes treatments are applied without patient consent. Health care providers are usually considered authority figures who know what’s best for their patients. 

In contrast to the medical model, a strengths-based perspective includes several empowering assumptions:

  • When painful psychological distress escalates, strengths-based counselors view the emergence of suicidal ideation as a normal and natural human response. Suicidal ideation is a reaction to life circumstances and may represent a method for coping with relentless psychological pain. 
  • Because suicidal ideation is viewed as a normal response to psychological pain, client disclosures of suicidality are framed as expressions of distress, rather than evidence of illness. Consequently, if clients disclose suicidality, counselors don’t react with fear and judgment, but instead welcome suicide-related disclosures. Strengths-based counselors recognize that when clients openly share suicidal thoughts, they are showing trust, thus creating opportunities for interpersonal and emotional connection.
  • Many people who are suicidal want to preserve their right to die by suicide. If they feel judged by health care or school professionals and coerced to receive treatment, they may shut down and resist. Instead of insisting that clients and students “need treatment,” strengths-based counselors recognize that clients are the best experts on their own lived experiences. Strengths-based counselors provide empathic, collaborative assessment and treatment when clients and students are suicidal.
  • Instead of relying on mental health diagnoses or asking symptom-based questions from a standard form such as the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, strengths-based counselors weave in assessment questions and observations pertaining to client strengths, hope and coping resources. Using principles of solution-focused counseling and positive psychology, strengths-based counselors balance symptom questions with wellness-oriented content.

We believe the preceding assumptions can be woven into counseling in ways that improve traditional suicide assessment and treatment approaches. In fact, over the past two decades, evidence-based treatments for suicide, such as collaborative assessment and management of suicide, have increasingly emphasized empathy, normalization of suicidality and counselor-client collaboration. An objectivist philosophy and medical attitude is no longer required to work with clients or students who are suicidal. Newer approaches, including the strengths-based approach discussed here, flow from postmodern, social constructionist philosophy in which conversation and collaboration are fundamental to decreasing distress and increasing hope.

A holistic approach

When clients disclose suicidal ideation, it’s not unusual for counselors to overfocus on assessment. In reaction to suicidality, counselors may begin asking too many closed questions about the presence or absence of suicide risk and protective factors. This shift away from an empathic focus on what’s hurting and toward analytic assessment protocols is unwarranted for two primary reasons. First, based on a meta-analysis of 50 years of risk and protective factors studies, a research group from Vanderbilt, Harvard and Columbia universities concluded that no factors provide much statistical advantage over chance suicide predictions. In other words, even if mental health or school professionals conduct an extensive assessment of client risk and protective factors, that assessment is unlikely to offer clinical or predictive value. Second, focusing too much on suicide risk assessment usually detracts from important relationship-building interactions that are necessary for positive counseling outcomes. 

Instead of overemphasizing risk factor assessment, counselors should identify client distress and respond empathically. Recognizing and responding supportively to emotional pain and distress will help individualize your understanding of the client’s unique risk and protective factors. From a practical perspective, rather than using a generic risk factor checklist, counselors are better off directly asking clients questions such as, “What’s happening that makes you feel suicidal?” and “What one thing, if it changed, would take away your suicidal feelings?” 

Additionally, as strengths-based practitioners, we should be scanning for, identifying and providing clients feedback on their unique positive qualities. Statements such as “Thank you so much for being brave enough to tell me about your suicidal thoughts” communicate acceptance and a reflection of client strengths. Although counselors may work in settings that use traditional suicide risk assessment protocols, they can still complement that procedure with a more holistic, positive and interpersonally supportive assessment and treatment planning process. 

To help counselors tend to the whole person — instead of overfocusing on suicidality — we recommend using a dimensional assessment and treatment model. Our particular dimensional model tracks and organizes client distress into seven categories. Here, we describe each dimension, offer examples of how distress manifests differently within each dimension, and identify evidence-based or theoretically robust interventions that address dimension-specific distress.

The emotional dimension: Clients who are suicidal often experience agonizing sadness, anxiety, guilt, shame, anger and other painful emotions. Other times, clients feel numb or emotionally drained. Focusing on and showing empathy for core emotional distress or numbness is foundational to working with these clients. Clients also may experience emotional dysregulation. Interventions to address emotional issues in counseling include traditional cognitive behavioral therapies for depression and anxiety, existential exploration of the meaning of emotions, and dialectical behavior therapy to aid clients in emotional regulation skill development.

The cognitive dimension: Humans often react to emotional pain with maladaptive cognitions that further increase their distress. Hopelessness, problem-solving impairments and core negative beliefs are linked to suicide. Depending upon each client’s unique cognitive symptoms and distress, strengths-based counselors will begin by responding with empathy and then, if needed, work with hopelessness in the here and now as it emerges in session. Counselors may also initiate problem-solving strategies, emphasize solution-focused exceptions and teach clients how to notice, track and modify maladaptive thoughts.

The interpersonal dimension: Substantial research points to social and interpersonal difficulties as factors that drive people toward suicide. Common interpersonal themes that trigger suicidal distress include social disconnection, interpersonal grief and loss, social skills deficits, and repetitive dysfunctional relationship patterns. Interventions in the interpersonal dimension include couple or family counseling, grief counseling, social skills training, and other strategies for enhancing social and romantic relationships.

The physical dimension: Physical symptoms trigger and exacerbate suicidal states. Common physical symptoms linked to suicide include agitation/arousal, physical illness, physical symptoms related to trauma, and insomnia. Using a strengths-based model, counselors can collaboratively develop treatment plans that directly address physical symptoms. Specific interventions include physical exercise, evidence-based trauma treatments, and cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia.

The cultural-spiritual dimension: Cultural practices and beliefs alleviate or contribute to client distress and suicidality. Religion, spirituality and a sense of purpose or meaning (or a lack thereof) powerfully mediate suicidality. Specific cultural-spiritual themes that trigger distress include disconnection from a community, higher power or faith system. A sense of meaninglessness or acculturative distress may also be present. Strengths-oriented counselors explore the cultural-spiritual and existential issues present in clients’ lives and develop individualized approaches to addressing these deeply personal sources of distress and potential sources of support or relief.

The behavioral dimension: Clients and students sometimes engage in specific behaviors that increase suicide risk. These may include alcohol/drug use, impulsivity and repeated self-injury. Having easy access to guns or other lethal means is another factor that increases risk. Helping clients recognize destructive behavior patterns, develop alternative coping behaviors and decrease their access to lethal means can be central to a holistic treatment plan. Additionally, collaborative safety planning is an evidence-based suicide intervention that focuses on positive coping behaviors. 

The contextual dimension: Many larger contextual, environmental or situational factors contribute to distress in the other six dimensions and thus heighten suicidality. These factors include poverty, neighborhood or relationship safety, racism, sexual harassment and unemployment. Helping clients recognize and change contextual life factors — if they have control over those factors — can be very empowering. Clients also need support coping with uncontrollable stressors. Developing an action plan and discerning when to use mindful acceptance may be an important part of the counseling process. Advocacy can be particularly useful for supporting clients as they face systemic barriers and oppression. 

Suicide competencies

Regardless of theoretical orientation or professional discipline, mental health and school professionals must meet or exceed foundational competency standards. In this article, we recommend integrating strengths-based principles, holistic assessment and treatment planning, and wellness activities into your work with individuals who are suicidal. Our recommendation isn’t intended to completely replace traditional suicide-related practices, but rather to add strengths-based skills and holistic case formulation to your counseling repertoire. 

When adding a strengths-based perspective into one’s counseling repertoire, counselors should remain cognizant of the usual and customary professional standards for working with suicide. The American Counseling Association’s current ethics code doesn’t provide specific guidance for suicide assessment and treatment. However, suicide-related competencies are available in the professional literature. For example, Robert Cramer of the University of North Carolina Charlotte distilled 10 essential suicide competencies from several different health care and mental health publications, including guidelines from the American Association of Suicidology. 

Cramer’s 10 suicide competencies are listed below, along with short statements describing how strengths-based counselors can address each competency.

1) Be aware of and manage your attitude and reactions to suicide. Strengths-based counselors strive for individual, cultural, interpersonal and spiritual self-awareness. Self-care also helps counselors stay balanced in their emotional responses to clients who are suicidal. 

2) Develop and maintain a collaborative, empathic stance with clients. Strengths-based counselors are relational, collaborative and empathic, while also consistently orienting toward clients’ strengths and resources.  

3) Know and elicit evidence-based risk and protective factors. Strengths-based counselors understand how to individualize risk and protective factors to fit each client’s unique risk and protective dynamics. 

4) Focus on the current plan and intent of suicidal ideation. Strengths-based counselors not only explore client plans and intentions but also actively engage in conversations about alternatives to suicide plans and ask clients about individual factors that reduce intent.

5) Determine the level of risk. Strengths-based counselors engage clients to obtain information about self-perceived risk and collaborate with clients to better understand factors that increase or decrease individual risk.

6) Develop and enact a collaborative evidence-based treatment plan. Strengths-based counselors engage clients in establishing an individualized safety plan that includes positive coping behaviors and collaboratively develop holistic treatment plans that address emotional, cognitive, interpersonal, cultural-spiritual, physical, behavioral and contextual life dimensions.

7) Notify and involve other people. Strengths-based counselors recognize the core importance of interpersonal connection to suicide prevention and involve significant others for safety and treatment purposes.

8) Document risk assessment, the treatment plan and the rationale for clinical decisions. Strengths-based counselors follow accepted practices for documenting their assessment, treatment and decision-making protocols.

9) Know the law concerning suicide. Strengths-based counselors are aware of local and national ethical and legal considerations when working with clients who are suicidal.

10) Engage in debriefing and self-care. Strengths-based counselors regularly consult with colleagues and supervisors and engage in suicide postvention as needed.

The strengths-based approach in action

Liam was a 20-year-old cisgender, heterosexual male with a biracial (white and Latino) cultural identity. At the time of the referral, Liam had just started a vocational training program in the diesel mechanics trade through a local community college. He was referred to counseling by his trade instructor. About a week previously, Liam had experienced a relationship breakup. Subsequently, he punched a wall while in class (breaking one of his fingers), talked about killing himself, threatened his former girlfriend’s new boyfriend, and impulsively walked off the job at his internship placement. 

Liam started his first session by bragging about punching the wall. He stated, “I don’t need counseling. I know how to take care of myself.” 

Rather than countering Liam’s opening comments, the counselor maintained a positive and accepting stance, saying, “You might be right. Counseling isn’t for everyone. You look like you’re quite good at taking care of yourself.” 

Liam shrugged and asked, “What am I supposed to talk about in here anyway?” 

Many clients who are feeling suicidal immediately begin talking about their distress. Others, like Liam, deny suicidality. When clients lead with distress, the counselor’s first task is to empathically explore the distress and highlight unique factors in the client’s life that trigger suicidal thoughts and impulses. In contrast, with Liam, the counselor mirrored Liam’s opening attitude, accepted Liam’s explanation and explicitly focused on Liam’s strengths: his employment goals, his initiative to start vocational training immediately after graduating high school, his ability to care deeply for others (such as his ex-girlfriend), and his pride at being physically fit. 

After about 15 minutes, the conversation shifted to how Liam made decisions in his life. Instead of questioning Liam’s judgment, the counselor continued a positive focus, saying, “As I think about your situation, in some ways, hitting the wall was a good idea. It’s definitely better than hitting a person.” The counselor then added, “I don’t blame you for being pissed off about breaking up. Nobody likes a breakup.” 

The counselor asked Liam to tell the story of his relationship and the events leading to the breakup. Liam was able to talk about his sense of betrayal and loneliness and his underlying worries that he’d never accomplish anything in life. He admitted to occasional thoughts of “doing something stupid, like offing myself.” He agreed to continue with counseling, mostly because it would look good to his vocational training instructor. Before the session ended, the counselor explained that counselors always need to do a thing called “a safety plan.” During safety planning, Liam admitted to owning two firearms, and even though he “didn’t need to,” he agreed to store his guns at his mom’s house for the next month. 

After the first session, the counselor documented the assessment, the intervention and Liam’s treatment plan. The counselor’s documentation included problems and strengths, organized with the holistic dimensional model:

1) Emotional: Liam experienced acute emotional distress and emerging suicidal ideation related to a relationship breakup. Although he minimized his distress, Liam was also able to articulate feelings of betrayal and loneliness. 

2) Cognitive: Liam felt hopeless about finding another girlfriend. He was somewhat evasive when asked about suicidal ideation. Eventually, he acknowledged thinking about it and that if he ever decided to die (which he said he “wouldn’t”), he would shoot himself. Liam was able to participate in problem-solving during the session.

3) Interpersonal: Although Liam was distressed about the breakup of his romantic relationship, he agreed to consult with his counselor about relationships during future sessions. He collaboratively brainstormed positive and supportive people to contact in case he began feeling lonely or suicidal. Liam reported a positive relationship with his mother. 

4) Physical: Liam reported difficulty sleeping. He said, “I’ve been drinking more than I need to.” During safety planning, Liam agreed to specific steps for dealing with his insomnia and alcohol consumption. Liam was in good physical shape and was invested in his physical well-being.

5) Cultural-spiritual: Liam said that “it won’t hurt me any” to attend church with his mom on Sundays. He reported a good relationship with his mother. He said that going to church with her was something she enjoyed and something he felt good about.

6) Behavioral: Liam contributed to writing up his safety plan. He agreed to follow the plan and take good care of himself over the coming week. Liam identified specific behavioral alternatives to drinking alcohol and suicidal actions. He agreed to store his firearms at his mother’s home.

7) Contextual: Other than high unemployment rates in his community, Liam didn’t report problems in the contextual dimension. He said that he currently had an apartment and believed he had a good employment future.

Concluding comments

A holistic, strengths-based and wellness-oriented model for working with clients and students who are suicidal is a good fit for the counseling profession. In tandem with knowledge and expertise in traditional suicide assessment and treatments, the strengths-based model provides a foundation for suicide assessment and treatment planning. A detailed description of the strengths-based model is available in our book, Suicide Assessment and Treatment Planning: A Strengths-Based Approach, which was published earlier this year by ACA.

 

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John Sommers-Flanagan is professor of counseling at the University of Montana with over 100 professional publications, including Suicide Assessment and Treatment Planning, Clinical Interviewing and seven other books co-authored with Rita Sommers-Flanagan. Contact him at john.sf@mso.umt.edu or through his blog, which also offers free counseling-related resources, at johnsommersflanagan.com.

Rita Sommers-Flanagan is professor emerita of counseling at the University of Montana. Since retiring, Rita has shifted her interests toward suicide prevention, positive psychology, creative writing and passive solar design. She blogs at godcomesby.com/author/ritasf13 and can be contacted at rita.sf@mso.umt.edu.


Counseling Today reviews unsolicited articles written by American Counseling Association members. To access writing guidelines and tips for having an article accepted for publication, visit ct.counseling.org/feedback.

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

Case conceptualization: Key to highly effective counseling

By Jon Sperry and Len Sperry December 7, 2020

In their first session, the counseling intern learned that Jane’s son had been diagnosed with brain cancer. The therapist then elicited the client’s thoughts and feelings about her son’s diagnosis. Jane expressed feelings of guilt and the thought that if she had done more about the early symptoms, this never would have happened to her son. Hearing this guilt producing thought, the intern spent much of the remaining session disputing it. As the session ended, the client was more despondent. 

After processing this session in supervision, the intern was no longer surprised that Jane had not kept a follow-up appointment. The initial session had occurred near the end of the intern’s second week, and she had been eager to practice cognitive disputation, which she believed was appropriate in this case. In answer to the supervisor’s question of why she had concluded this, the intern responded that “it felt right.”

The supervisor was not surprised by this response because the intern had not developed a case conceptualization. With one, the intern could have anticipated the importance of immediately establishing an effective and collaborative therapeutic alliance and gently processing Jane’s emotional distress sufficiently before dealing with her guilt-producing thought.

This failure to develop an adequate and appropriate case conceptualization is not just a shortcoming of trainees, however. It is also common enough among experienced counselors.

What is case conceptualization?

Basically, a case conceptualization is a process and cognitive map for understanding and explaining a client’s presenting issues and for guiding the counseling process. Case conceptualizations provide counselors with a coherent plan for focusing treatment interventions, including the therapeutic alliance, to increase the likelihood of achieving treatment goals.

We will use the definition from our integrated case conceptualization model to operationalize the term for the purposes of explaining how to utilize this process. Case conceptualization is a method and clinical strategy for obtaining and organizing information about a client, understanding and explaining the client’s situation and maladaptive patterns, guiding and focusing treatment, anticipating challenges and roadblocks, and preparing for successful termination.

We believe that case conceptualization is the most important counseling competency besides developing a strong therapeutic alliance. If our belief is correct, why is this competency taught so infrequently in graduate training programs, and why do counselors-in-training struggle to develop this skill? We think that case conceptualization can be taught in graduate training programs and that counselors in the field can develop this competency through ongoing training and deliberate practice.

This article will articulate one method for practicing case conceptualization.

The eight P’s

We use and teach the eight P’s format of case conceptualization because it is brief, quick to learn and easy to use. Students and counselors in the community who have taken our workshops say that the step-by-step format helps guide them in forming a mental picture — a cognitive map — of the client. They say that it also aids them in making decisions about treatment and writing an initial evaluation report.

The format is based on eight elements for articulating and explaining the nature and origins of the client’s presentation and subsequent treatment. These elements are described in terms of eight P’s: presentation, predisposition (including culture), precipitants, protective factors and strengths, pattern, perpetuants, (treatment) plan, and prognosis.

Presentation

Presentation refers to a description of the nature and severity of the client’s clinical presentation. Typically, this includes symptoms, personal concerns and interpersonal conflicts.

Four of the P’s — predisposition, precipitants, pattern and perpetuants — provide a clinically useful explanation for the client’s presenting concern.

Predisposition

Predisposition refers to all factors that render an individual vulnerable to a clinical condition. Predisposing factors usually involve biological, psychological, social and cultural factors.

This statement is influenced by the counselor’s theoretical orientation. The theoretical model espouses a system for understanding the cause of suffering, the development of personality traits, and a process for how change and healing can occur in counseling. We will use a biopsychosocial model in this article because it is the most common model used by mental health providers. The model incorporates a holistic understanding of the client.

Biological: Biological factors include genetic, familial, temperament and medical factors, such as family history of a mental or substance disorder, or a cardiovascular condition such as hypertension.

Psychological: Psychological factors might include dysfunctional beliefs involving inadequacy, perfectionism or overdependence, which further predispose the individual to a medical condition such as coronary artery disease. Psychological factors might also involve limited or exaggerated social skills such as a lack of friendship skills, unassertiveness or overaggressiveness.

Social: Social factors could include early childhood losses, inconsistent parenting style, an overly enmeshed or disengaged family environment, and family values such as competitiveness or criticalness. Financial stressors can further exacerbate a client’s clinical presentations. The “social” element in the biopsychosocial model includes cultural factors. We separate these factors out, however.

Cultural: Of the many cultural factors, three are particularly important in developing effective case conceptualizations: level of acculturation, acculturative stress and acculturation-specific stress. Acculturation is the process of adapting to a culture different from one’s initial culture. Adapting to another culture tends to be stressful, and this is called acculturative stress. Such adaptation is reflected in levels of acculturation that range from low to high.

Generally, clients with a lower level of acculturation experience more distress than those with a higher level of acculturation. Disparity in acculturation levels within a family is noted in conflicts over expectations for language usage, career plans, and adherence to the family’s food choices and rituals. Acculturative stress differs from acculturation-specific stresses such as discrimination, second-language competence and microaggressions.

Precipitants

Precipitants refer to physical, psychological and social stressors that may be causative or coincide with the onset of symptoms or relational conflict. These may include physical stressors such as trauma, pain, medication side effects or withdrawal from an addictive substance. Common psychological stressors involve losses, rejections or disappointments that undermine a sense of personal competence. Social stressors may involve losses or rejections that undermine an individual’s social support and status. Included are the illness, death or hospitalization of a significant other, job demotion, the loss of Social Security disability payments and so on.

Protective factors and strengths

Protective factors are factors that decrease the likelihood of developing a clinical condition. Examples include coping skills, a positive support system, a secure attachment style and the experience of leaving an abusive relationship. It is useful to think of protective factors as being the mirror opposite of risk factors (i.e., factors that increase the likelihood of developing a clinical condition). Some examples of risk factors are early trauma, self-defeating beliefs, abusive relationships, self-harm and suicidal ideation.

Related to protective factors are strengths. These are psychological processes that consistently enable individuals to think and act in ways that benefit themselves and others. Examples of strengths include mindfulness, self-control, resilience and self-confidence. Because professional counseling emphasizes strengths and protective factors, counselors should feel supported in identifying and incorporating these elements in their case conceptualizations.

Pattern (maladaptive)

Pattern refers to the predictable and consistent style or manner in which an individual thinks, feels, acts, copes, and defends the self both in stressful and nonstressful circumstances. It reflects the individual’s baseline functioning. Pattern has physical (e.g., a sedentary and coronary-prone lifestyle), psychological (e.g., dependent personality style or disorder) and social features (e.g., collusion in a relative’s marital problems). Pattern also includes the individual’s functional strengths, which counterbalance dysfunction.

Perpetuants

Perpetuants refer to processes through which an individual’s pattern is reinforced and confirmed by both the individual and the individual’s environment. These processes may be physical, such as impaired immunity or habituation to an addictive substance; psychological, such as losing hope or fearing the consequences of getting well; or social, such as colluding family members or agencies that foster constrained dysfunctional behavior rather than recovery and growth. Sometimes precipitating factors continue and become perpetuants.

Plan (treatment)

Plan refers to a planned treatment intervention, including treatment goals, strategy and methods. It includes clinical decision-making considerations and ethical considerations.

Prognosis

Prognosis refers to the individual’s expected response to treatment. This forecast is based on the mix of risk factors and protective factors, client strengths and readiness for change, and the counselor’s experience and expertise in effecting therapeutic change. 

Case example

To illustrate this process, we will provide a case vignette to help you practice and then apply the case to our eight P’s format. Ready? Let’s give it a shot.

Joyce is a 35-year-old Ph.D. student at an online university. She is white, identifies as heterosexual and reports that she has never been in a love relationship. She is self-referred and is seeking counseling to reduce her chronic anxiety and social anxiety. She recently started a new job at a bookstore — a stressor that brought her to counseling. She reports feeling very anxious when speaking in her online classes and in social settings. She is worried that she will not be able to manage her anxiety at her new job because she will be in a managerial role.

Joyce reports that she has been highly anxious since childhood. She denies past psychological or psychiatric treatment of any kind but reports that she has recently read several self-help books on anxiety. She also manages her stress by spending time with her close friend from class, spending time with her two dogs, drawing and painting. She appears to be highly motivated for counseling and states that her goals for therapy are “to manage and reduce my anxiety, increase my confidence and eventually get in a romantic relationship.”

Joyce describes her childhood as lonely and herself as “an introvert seeking to be an extrovert.” She states that her parents were successful lawyers who valued success, achievement and public recognition. They were highly critical of Joyce when she would struggle with academics or act shy in social situations. As an only child, she often played alone and would spend her free time reading or drawing by herself.

When asked how she views herself and others, Joyce says, “I often don’t feel like I’m good enough and don’t belong. I usually expect people to be self-centered, critical and judgmental.”

Case conceptualization outline

We suggest developing a case conceptualization with an outline of key phrases for each of the eight P’s. Here is what these phrases might look like for Joyce’s case. These phrases are then woven together into sentences that make up a case conceptualization statement that can be imported into your initial evaluation report.

Presentation: Generalized anxiety symptoms and social anxiety

Precipitant: New job and concerns about managing her anxiety

Pattern (maladaptive): Avoids closeness to avoid perceived harm

Predisposition:

  • Biological: Paternal history of anxiety
  • Psychological: Views herself as inadequate and others as critical; deficits in assertiveness skills, self-soothing skills and relational skills
  • Social: Few friends, a history of social anxiety, and parents who were highly successful and critical
  • Cultural: No acculturative stress or cultural stressors but from upper-middle-class socioeconomic status, so from privileged background — access to services and resources

Perpetuants: Small support system; believes that she is not competent at work

Protective factors/strengths: Compassionate, creative coping, determined, hardworking, has
access to various resources, motivated for counseling

Plan (treatment): Supportive and strengths-based counseling, thought testing, self-monitoring, mindfulness practice, downward arrow technique, coping and relationship skills training, referral for group counseling

Prognosis: Good, given her motivation for treatment and the extent to which her strengths and protective factors are integrated into treatment

Case conceptualization statement

Joyce presents with generalized anxiety symptoms and social anxiety (presentation). A recent triggering event includes her new job at a local bookstore — she is concerned that she will make errors and will have high levels of anxiety (precipitant). She presents with an avoidant personality — or attachment — style and typically avoids close relationships. She has one close friend and has never been in a love relationship. She typically moves away from others to avoid being criticized, judged or rejected (pattern). Some perpetuating factors include her small support system and her belief that she is not competent at work (perpetuants).

Some of her protective factors and strengths include that she is compassionate, uses art and music to cope with stress, is determined and hardworking, and is collaborative in the therapeutic relationship. Protective factors include that she has a close friend from school, has access to university services such as counseling services and student clubs and organizations, is motivated to engage in counseling, and has health insurance (strengths & protective factors).

The following biopsychosocial factors attempt to explain Joyce’s anxiety symptoms and avoidant personality style: a paternal history of anxiety (biological); she views herself as inadequate and others as critical and judgmental, and she struggles with deficits in assertiveness skills, self-soothing skills and relational skills (psychological); she has few friends, a history of social anxiety and parents who were highly successful and critical toward her (social). Given Joyce’s upper-middle-class upbringing, she was born into a life of opportunity and privilege, so her entitlement of life going in a preferred and comfortable path may also explain her challenges with managing life stress (cultural).

Besides facilitating a highly supportive, empathic and encouraging counseling relationship, treatment will include psychoeducation skills training to develop assertiveness skills, self-soothing skills and relational skills. These skills will be implemented through modeling, in-session rehearsal and role-play. Her challenges with relationship skills and interpersonal patterns will also be addressed with a referral to a therapy group at the university counseling center. Joyce’s negative self-talk, interpersonal avoidance and anxiety symptoms will be addressed with Socratic questioning, thought testing, self-monitoring, mindfulness practice and the downward arrow technique (plan-treatment).

The outcome of therapy with Joyce is judged to be good, given her motivation for treatment, if her strengths and protective factors are integrated into the treatment process (prognosis).

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Notice how the treatment plan is targeted at the presenting symptoms and pattern dynamics of Joyce’s case. Each of the eight P’s was identified in the case conceptualization, and you can see the flow of each element and its interconnections to the other elements.

Tips for writing effective case conceptualizations

1) Seek consultation or supervision with a peer or supervisor for feedback on your case conceptualizations. Often, another perspective will help you understand the various elements (eight P’s) that you are trying to conceptualize.

2) Be flexible with your hypotheses and therapeutic guesses when piecing together case conceptualizations. Sometimes your hunches will be accurate, and sometimes you will be way off the mark.

3) Consider asking the client how they would explain their presenting problem. We begin with a question such as, “How might you explain the (symptoms, conflict, etc.) you are experiencing?” The client’s perspective may reveal important predisposing factors and cultural influences as well as their expectations for treatment.

4) Be OK with being imperfect or being completely wrong. This process takes practice, feedback and supervision.

5) After each initial intake or assessment, jot down the presenting dynamics and make some guesses of the cause or etiology of them.

6) Have a solid understanding of at least one theoretical model. Read some of the seminal textbooks or watch counseling theory videos to help you gain a comprehensive assessment of a specific theory. Knowing the foundational ideas of at least one theory will help with your conceptual map of piecing together the information that you’ve gathered about a client.

We realize that putting together case conceptualizations can be a challenge, particularly in the beginning. We hope you will find that this approach works for you. Best wishes!

 

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For more information and ways of learning and using this approach to case conceptualization, check out the recently published second edition of our book, Case Conceptualization: Mastering This Competency With Ease and Confidence.

Also, Len and Jon Sperry published a new book in November 2021, titled The 15 Minute Case Conceptualization: Mastering the Pattern-Focused Approach.

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Jon Sperry is an associate professor of clinical mental health counseling at Lynn University in Florida. He teaches, writes about and researches case conceptualization and conducts workshops on it worldwide. Contact him at jsperry@lynn.edu or visit his website at drjonsperry.com.

Len Sperry is a professor of counselor education at Florida Atlantic University and a fellow of the American Counseling Association. He has long advocated for counselors learning and using case conceptualization, and his research team has completed eight studies on it. Contact him at lsperry@fau.edu.

Knowledge Share articles are developed from sessions presented at American Counseling Association conferences.

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.

The need for standardization in suicide risk assessment

By Gregory K. Moffatt April 14, 2020

“I am afraid I might actually do it,” the 31-year-old woman told me. Abigail (not her real name) was referring to ending her own life. For years she had struggled with depression, and she teetered on the brink of suicide. Medication had helped her only minimally. Her ideation was unquestioned and her plan was clear.

These were frightening words to me, and for weeks I held my breath, fearing a phone call from her husband announcing that Abigail had completed suicide. A brief hospitalization had somewhat stabilized Abigail’s life, but she was worn out. Upon her release from the hospital, her husband and I worked together to form a safety plan in an attempt to ensure that he wouldn’t be left a widower and her two children left motherless.

I have seen many clients like Abigail over the span of my career as a licensed professional counselor. Managing clients who are suicidal is a common occurrence in therapy. Data are scarce regarding the percentage of suicidal clients a clinician in general practice might have. However, most of the numbers indicate that up to half of an average client caseload is on the worrisome side of the suicide risk continuum. That percentage is far greater, of course, among clinicians who work with specific populations or disorders that have been shown to have increased risk for suicide. Abigail fell into one of these high-risk categories. Yet as recently as 2006, a meta-analysis by Stefania Aegisdottir and colleagues published in The Counseling Psychologist basically indicated that clinicians aren’t very good at assessing risk. That is frightening.

Equally disturbing is research showing that about one-quarter of us will experience the loss of a client to suicide during our careers, but many (if not most) of us are poorly prepared to manage suicide risk. In a 2013 study by Cheryl Sawyer and colleagues of 34 master’s-level counseling students, 15% reported no confidence at all and 38% reported little confidence in their ability to assess for suicide risk, whereas only 3% reported feeling fully competent to manage suicide risk.

But the problem isn’t just with graduate counseling students. In spring 2017, I presented a workshop for my state professional counseling association’s annual conference. The workshop focused on assessing risk of harm to self or others. I asked the 85 or so participants if they regularly worked with clients who were suicidal. Every hand went up. I then asked if they felt that their training had adequately prepared them for assessing suicide risk. Only two people in the entire group indicated that they felt prepared.

This response is consistent with an article titled “Psychologists need more training in suicide risk assessment” that appeared in the April 2014 Monitor on Psychology. The article, which detailed a task force report and summit organized by the American Association of Suicidology (AAS), said in part, “After three years of study, the AAS task force … called for accrediting organizations, state licensing boards, and new state and federal legislation to require suicide-specific training for mental health professionals.” The article went on to say that “many psychology graduate students are trained only on suicide statistics and risk factors, not in clinical methods of conducting meaningful suicide risk assessments.”

Something is amiss. Not only does it appear that mental health professionals receive inadequate training in this area, but some researchers even question whether the little training we do get has any efficacy. Robert Cramer and colleagues, writing in 2013 about suicide risk assessment training for psychology doctoral programs, stated that “no existing training methods have been investigated specifically in traditional clinical or counseling psychology training settings and samples.”

Although the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders addresses suicide risks by diagnosis, it does not provide any risk assessment tools for clinicians. Given the picture I’ve painted, how can it be that in 2020, we do not have any clear standard — often referred to as best practices — for suicide risk assessment?

Looking back

To identify what blind spots the counseling profession might have, I try to imagine what people will say about our field 50 or 100 years from now. After all, it is easy to look at the past and recognize our errors and oversights. As developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan wrote in Three Seductive Ideas (2000), “If you had lived in Europe as the fifteenth century came to a close, you would have believed that witches cause disease … and that pursuit of sexual pleasure depletes a man’s vital energy and guarantees exclusion from heaven.”

These ideas sound ridiculous today. If you are younger than 30, the following facts from the more recent past will sound equally ridiculous to you:

  • If you were a mental health person in the 1930s, “moron” and “idiot” were formal classifications of what we now call developmental delay. In addition, you believed ice water baths and jumping on a person’s chest could cure schizophrenia.
  • If you were practicing in the 1950s, common treatments for depression included prefrontal lobectomies. Some physicians literally lined patients up and performed these barbaric procedures in 10-15 minutes each.
  • If you were practicing therapy in 1970, you believed that homosexuality was a mental illness. Just a few years ago, some people believed in and actually practiced praying homosexuality out of a person (one of the milder techniques used in so-called “conversion” therapy).
  • In the early 1980s, hardly anyone had heard of AIDS, stalking, Munchausen syndrome by proxy, or autism.
  • When I was in graduate school in the mid-1980s, none of my master’s or doctoral professors even mentioned what we now call “evidence-based” therapies. Cognitive behavior therapy was leading the way, but most of us described ourselves as “eclectic,” and after our supervision hours were satisfied, we all basically did whatever we thought worked.

The lack of exactitude in the mental health field doesn’t end there. When I was a regular lecturer at the FBI Academy in the 1990s, I began receiving calls from around the country about various applications of counseling to law enforcement. One call came from a sheriff’s department. Five officers had been involved in a shooting, and departmental procedure required a fitness-for-duty assessment. The sheriff was asking me to do the assessments, so I began researching this facet of risk assessment and discovered there was no standard whatsoever in the field regarding fitness for duty. It was simply a judgment call on the part of the clinician. Hard to believe, isn’t it?

Apparently, we have a lot to learn. I’m hoping that in the not-too-distant future, therapists will be saying, “Remember back when there was no standard for suicide risk assessment? Unbelievable!”

Risk assessment tools

It would be easy to confuse lack of a standard with lack of tools. We have lots of tools. Among the assessment tools commonly used are the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation, the Reasons for Living Inventory, the Suicide Probability Scale, the Suicide Intent Scale  and the SAD PERSONS scale, to name just a few. However, there is very little, if any, data clearly demonstrating that one tool is better than another or that assessment tools have any efficacy at all.

One exception is the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation, which is as well-researched and as validated as any instrument available. But there is still no assumption that clinicians use “evidence-based” assessments. Does that sound a little crazy to anyone but me?

In a 2016 article in the Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, Keith Harris, Owen Lello and Christopher Willcox identified a number of issues with the standard practice of suicide risk assessment, but again, there is no consensus in the field. The authors noted that “an American Association of Suicidology task force … and other experts have called for improved teaching guidelines on valid risk assessment. The findings of this and related studies bring to light weaknesses in current suicide risk assessment and conceptualization, and concerns that some clinical educators and practitioners may be unaware of the limitations of popular tests. There is a clear and present need for updating core competencies for accurate assessment and risk formulation.”

How do we know our assessments are effective?

I’ve never lost a client to suicide, and it would be tempting to suppose that this indicates my system of suicide risk assessment and intervention is effective. However, there are multiple factors unrelated to my competence that might lead to the same outcome. For instance, clients who come to counseling might simply be more motivated to live than those individuals who don’t come to counseling. In such cases, perhaps any adequate therapist would have been effective.

There may be other factors in my clinical work that are the cause of my fortunate success. In other words, perhaps I have been doing something else that works (maybe good rapport or social support), but I’m not aware that this is what is actually helping as opposed to my suicide assessment and intervention. And, of course, I could have been wrong in assuming risk at all. These potential false positives could mean that my clients didn’t kill themselves because they weren’t really suicidal to begin with. And these are just three possibilities.

This is why we need research and standardization. Standardization adheres to accepted research format. My students often start comments and questions with “I think …” or “I feel …” I never let that slide. I don’t care what we think or feel. What do we know? That is what research — evidence-based practice — helps us answer.

I understand that my words may be hard to hear. Before evidence-based therapies became the ethical standard, all of us in mental health were doing what we thought worked. Any challenge to our practice was met with a defensive posture, and I was among the clinicians taking that stance. We felt or believed (just like my students) that our methods worked because our clients appeared to get better. We were certain we were right, and maybe we were, but we had nothing concrete on which to base our assumptions. That seems obvious in hindsight, but the thought was new to us at the time.

Some of our clients might have seemed better but really weren’t. Their desire for improvement might have masked symptoms, and we also know that clients want to please us. They might easily have presented their cases in a brighter light than they should have. Other times, they might have been better temporarily but regressed after terminating therapy. We can easily misinterpret our positive feelings about our work as evidence that it is effective. Could we be making similar mistakes right now in risk assessment for suicide?

A perfect case in point is no-harm contracts. One of the things that clinicians seem to agree upon widely is that there are benefits to using no-harm contracts — also called safety contracts — with our clients who are suicidal. Yet years of attempts to validate the efficacy of no-harm contracts have turned up nothing. M. David Rudd, Michael Mandrusiak and Thomas Joiner Jr. noted in a 2006 article in the Journal of Clinical Psychology: In Session that “no-suicide contracts suffer from a broad range of conceptual, practical, and empirical problems. Most significantly, they have no empirical support for their effectiveness.” A 2005 article by Jeane Lee and Mary Lynne Bartlett reported the same thing. In other words, the one thing that almost all of us do has no data supporting its efficacy.

What we risk

When I’m working through clinical issues, I find it helpful to think of what I would say if I were sitting in front of the ethics committee of my licensing board or if I were being scrutinized in court by a hostile attorney. How hard would it be for an attorney to find 10 clinicians who would propose that I made the wrong decision? If all you can say is, “I thought this was a good idea,” then you have a very weak defense.

In such cases, we risk losing a lawsuit and perhaps having our licenses censured, suspended or revoked. The more important risk, however, is that we might fail our clients and they might lose their lives when we could have served them better.

A standard approach

I’m not the first person to notice this problem, of course. AAS, among other groups, regularly focuses on the development of reliable and valid processes for assessing suicide risk, but as of yet, the solutions are elusive. A number of research studies have attempted to address the issue. James Christopher Fowler summarized well in a 2012 article in Psychotherapy when he wrote, “We are not yet in possession of evidence-based diagnostic tests that can accurately predict suicide risk on an individual level without also creating an inordinate number of false-positive predictions.” This summary brings us right back to where we started.

Combing through the research over the years, I’ve narrowed what we know about risk into a three-factor risk model and five components of risk in my assessment process as a starting place for evaluating the efficacy of risk assessment. I’m not supposing that my work is original or that my system is better than another. I’m only proposing that what I present here is consistent with what we know and that it can serve as a starting point for collecting evidence and producing a standard of best practice.

Three-factor model: The three-factor model proposes that clients are at risk or protected from risk in three global arenas: presenting factors, personal factors and protective factors.

Presenting factors include diagnoses (depression, for example), loneliness, divorce, prior attempts, suicidal ideation and other situational factors that put clients at higher risk for suicide. 

Personal factors include pessimism, weak problem-solving skills and minimal coping skills that put clients at higher risk for suicide. Included here are actuarial data. Some populations, such as female African Americans, have been shown to have very low risk for suicide, whereas others are statistically very high (e.g., Native Americans, male Caucasian teens, the elderly).

Finally, protective factors counterbalance presenting and personal factors. This would include healthy relationships, strong social support networks and religious commitment.

Moffatt’s HM4: The model for assessing risk that I use addresses all three factors. My HM4 model has five components of examination — hopefulness, method, means, motivation and mitigating circumstances.

The research is clear. People without hope are at high risk. Sometimes this is called “future orientation.” Regardless, the question is, “What does my client have to look forward to tomorrow, next week or next year?” If the answer is “nothing,” then I’m worried.

Method refers to one’s plan. The more specific and clear the method, the more I’m concerned. “I sometimes think the world would be better if I just didn’t wake up” is a vague plan. “I have been collecting my mother’s medications a little at a time. I have them hidden in my room, and I plan to take them all at once when everyone leaves for work and school” is a very precise plan.

Means has to do with the tools to be used and the ability to carry out one’s method of dying by suicide. One of the children in my practice once said he wanted to kill himself. His method was to invent a robot that would kill him in his sleep. His method was clear, but the means of executing that plan were completely unrealistic. Even if he could have invented such a robot, the likelihood that he would be able to carry out this plan without attracting his parents’ attention was minimal. On the other hand, teens and adults often have much more realistic means and, because of freedom of movement and access to weapons, drugs and other resources, are much more likely to succeed in a suicide attempt.

Motivation refers to the level of desire to follow through and complete suicide. Fortunately for us as counselors, most of our clients don’t want to die. Their motivation is low even though their emotional pain is high. This is why suicide hotlines work. People are so highly motivated to find a solution (having low motivation to complete the act of suicide) that they will call a complete stranger to seek help. 

Finally, mitigating circumstances are issues that are so weighty that they override the other areas of assessment. Mitigating circumstances can either increase or decrease risk for suicide. My concern for a high-risk client might be overshadowed by the person’s religious beliefs about suicide or by their desire to avoid hurting their children, spouse or parents. “I couldn’t do that to my children” is something that I’ve heard many times from high-risk clients. “My uncle committed suicide, and it devastated my father’s family” is another. Readers might recognize that hope is a mitigating factor, but it is such an important one that it has its own place in my model.

Assessment of Abigail

Abigail’s risk was clear. She was in a high-risk gender, age and diagnostic demographic; she had been contemplating suicide for a very long time; and she had a clear plan. She had been in emotional pain for many years and, most frightening to me, she had little hope of anything ever getting better. Her efforts to improve and the efforts of others to help her, in her estimation, had been futile. She had purchased a poison specifically to have it available if she decided to kill herself (method), and it was presently in her possession (means). I am positive she was motivated to follow through because getting the poison was not easy. She was willing to work hard to prepare for her own death, so I could have little confidence that she wouldn’t follow through. 

Among several mitigating factors in Abigail’s case was that she loved her children and didn’t want to abandon them. Also, she was certain that her religion did not permit suicide, and she feared “an eternity in hell” if she killed herself. Also working in her favor was that she possessed at least enough hope to keep our appointments. She was willing to at least try to let me help her even though she was unsure it was getting her anywhere. She came to therapy several times a week and was willing to trust that life might improve. Finally, she pursued medication for her depression and continued to engage in the business of life. 

Abigail is still alive today, and even though she struggles at times, she reports that she is doing better, that her depression has been managed, and that (now a grandmother) she is finding some happiness in life with her grandchildren.

Conclusions

If I sound overly critical of our profession, it is unintentional. It isn’t that I think we don’t know anything about suicide and risk assessment. On the contrary, there are mounds of data on statistics, risk factors, assessing and so forth. I attended a fantastic education session on suicide risk assessment at the American Counseling Association’s 2018 conference. The session was packed out, the presenters were fabulous, and the information provided was very helpful, but the very nature of the workshop demonstrated that we lack clear standards. Nearly all of us seem to be asking the same question: What do we do?

Without a standard for suicide risk assessment, clinicians face two very serious risks. The first and most important is that failure to standardize may leave our clients at risk for self-harm. Just because we have individualized systems that we believe are working doesn’t mean that they are working. The second issue is self-protection in the event of a lawsuit or a complaint against us with our licensing boards. The existence of best practice standards would allow us to defend ourselves.

Although there is no standard assessment for suicide risk currently, it isn’t beyond our grasp. In the 1990s, the medical community began looking at the use of a research-based protocol in emergency room heart treatment. Malcolm Gladwell described this process in his 2007 book Blink. Physicians resented the simple three-question protocol and were incredulous that anyone would suggest that such a simple tool could offer better triage than their professional experience did. Yet data proved that the protocol was superior in saving lives. The protocol is now standard in the medical field. The same process can be achieved in our field as well, but it depends on our profession’s willingness to study it and to accept the results.

 

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Gregory K. Moffatt is a veteran licensed professional counselor of more than 30 years and the dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Point University in Georgia. His experience includes three decades of work with children, trauma and abuse, as well as a variety of other experiences, including work with schools, businesses and law enforcement. He also writes the monthly Voice of Experience column for CT Online. Contact him at Greg.Moffatt@point.edu.

Counseling Today reviews unsolicited articles written by American Counseling Association members. To access writing guidelines and tips for having an article accepted for publication, go to ct.counseling.org/feedback.

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Opinions expressed and statements made in articles appearing on CT Online should not be assumed to represent the opinions of the editors or policies of the American Counseling Association.