Suicide Counselling

Silhouette lonely and sad girlMany people experience turmoil during their lives and sometimes suicide might feel like the only way or the best way to get away from what appears to be an overwhelming situation.

Individuals may experience sadness, shame, self-hate or complete hopelessness. If they want to end their life, the thoughts and emotions experienced right now will probably seem unbearable. People who feel suicidal often feel worthless or that no one cares about them; they may fail to understand their own emotions or that they’re not even worth caring about.

Common reasons that people may feel suicidal include:

• Recognised or even un-diagnosed mental illness, including severe depression, generalised anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, bipolar disorder, anorexia
• Moving away from friends and family and familiar surroundings, e.g. new job, university
• Loss of a close friend or family member
• Social anxiety and/or difficulty to trust other people, and avoiding engagement makes it difficult for them to create new relationships
• Difficult to trust people or engage properly with others
• Mental illness such as depression forces them into isolation
• Chronic pain/illness forces them to avoid loved ones
• Mental, physical bullying or abuse that can occur at work, socially or more commonly online in today’s age
• Work problems, where high pressure, under performance or redundancy are more common occurrences in the workplace

Counselling for suicidal thoughts

Suicidal thoughts are most commonly addressed using cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) that applies two different techniques:

• Acceptance techniques focus on making sense of who you are and what you do. It aims to show you that no matter how destructive your behaviour is, it still makes sense – it is still a valid coping mechanism
• Change techniques focus on ways you can change your behaviour and learn more effective, less destructive ways of coping with your distress. You will learn to replace destructive behaviours with behaviours that allow you to move on to a better place in life

COVID-19

In the face of the current pandemic, we closed our offices on 16-March. However, our therapists are committed to our clients and are determined not to disrupt the delivery of psychological services.
We continue to provide treatment sessions via HIPAA compliant virtual platforms.